/The (hristi^i^Tkith 



WFi^he-rMhrkwick 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf Mili&S 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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FUNDAMENTALS 

A BRIEF UNFOLDING OF 

THE BASAL TRUTHS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
FAITH 



FUNDAMENTALS 

A BRIEF UNFOLDING OF 

THE BASAL TRUTHS OF THE 
CHRISTIAN FAITH 



BY 

W. FISHER MARKWICK 



I SEP 29IB94 



IHI ANCHORA" I ^ ^^<m, C-^7-.^ Jt 



I 



NEW YORK 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND COMPANY 

(INCORPORATED) 

182 Fifth Avenue 



K 



\'dj\ 






Copyright, 1894y 
By Anson D. F. Randolph and Company 

(INCORPORATED). 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S. A- 



1 



PREFACE. 



The author's purpose in this volume is 
neither more nor less than to set forth in 
simple form those Basal Truths of the Christian 
religion which are fundamental to all rational 
and reliable belief. He believes that these 
truths may be fully and clearly elucidated 
without the slightest tinge of sectarianism, 
and in a more simple phraseology than is 
usually employed in the writings of pur stand- 
ard theologies. The object, therefore, at which 
these pages aim, is such a presentation of 
Fundamental Truth as shall be readily appre- 
hended by those who have not been privileged 
to receive a technical training in Christian 



vi PREFACE. 



doctrine. If this aim shall prove to have been 

realized, and the mists be lifted from that 

spiritual landscape which so many disciples 

desire more clearly to discern, he will be more 

than satisfied. 

W. F. M. 



The Parsonage, 
Anson lA, Conn. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. God II 

II. Man , ^;^ 

in- Sin 55 

IV. Repentance 79 

V. Faith loi 

VI. Regeneration 125 

VII. Adoption 147 

VIII. Peace 171 

IX. Hope 191 

X. Love 213 

XL Holiness 235 

XIL Heaven 257 



I. 

GOD. 




12 BASAL TRUTHS. 

a formal definition of God. Mo formula can be 
framed concerning him, which can at all sim- 
plify the conceptions we have already ; and no 
explanation is possible which can reduce the 
divine nature to the level of our comprehension. 

And, on the whole, we are glad that this is 
so ; for we believe that it is wisest and best. 
How much narrower our life would really be if 
there were no Infinite Being, into whose immen- 
sity thought might run out and lose itself ; no 
Incomprehensible Being, in whose grandeur and 
glory our souls might be entrancingly absorbed; 
and in whose mysterious presence we might 
bow in adoration and in awe. 

We are surrounded with evidences of the 
being and presence of One who is infinitely 
above and beyond us, which appeal with equal 
force to reason and to faith. But these evi- 
dences do not make him fully known. 

There- is a God in History; and though one 
reader may fail to perceive the brightness of 
the vision, it may be plainly discerned by the 



I 



GOD. 13 

neighbor at his side. No sceptic should forget 
that the real philosophy of history is the march 
of Providence down through the ages. But it 
must none the less be admitted that the study 
of Providence does not wholly suffice us here. 

The Hebrew conception of God, as the *' I 
AM," the Almighty, the self-existent, and eter- 
nal, tended more and more, in the lapse of ages, 
to sever him from all immediate contact with 
human affairs. He was, even to his chosen 
people, a God behind a veil. He dwelt in light 
unapproachable. He was a stern lawgiver, an 
inexorable judge, rather than a God command- 
ing their love and trust 

Nature does not clearly reveal him. The 
visible creation is but his vesture, and not his 
veritable self. Our most far-reaching ideas of 
him are but as shadows. Our largest and 
holiest contemplations of his nature leave us 
still insensible to what he is in the essence of 
his being. The most thoughtful spirits of our 
race have engaged themselves, all down the 



14 BASAL TRUTHS. 

centuries, in the study of his perfections; and 
though the knowledge of God has been con- 
stantly increasing with the growth of human 
thought, yet these brighter minds have never 
reached a height from which they could survey 
the vast domain his nature covers, or know him 
in the fulness of his power. 

Thus thought, which grapples all other 
problems, is powerless here. Reason, which 
penetrates to the heart of things material, is 
unable to decipher the scrolls on which his 
character is displayed. Imagination can blend 
no colors with which to paint the portrait of 
him who '' makes the clouds his chariot, and 
rides upon the wings of the wind." And even 
Faith, while it believes in his reality, openly 
confesses that it does not, and cannot, compre- 
hend him as he is. 

But, notwithstanding all this, a belief in God, 
and a desire to know more of him, is well nigh 
universal. That cry of Philip's, *' Lord, shew 
us the Father and it sufficeth us," is not so 



GOD. 15 

much the voice of his own curiosity, as it is 
the expression of the heart-longings of the 
great human family for a fuller knowledge 
of, and a better acquaintance with, the great 
Head of the household, the common Father 
of the race. 

Men still desire to know God through the 
senses. They do not hesitate, even yet, to ask 
for ocular demonstrations of his existence and 
character. The thought in thousands of minds 
is, '* If we could once see God, we should then 
be fully content." They have the feeling that 
such a sight would settle all doubts and ques- 
tionings, and give rest and peace to the soul 
now agitated with the unceasing conflict of 
religious hopes and fears. We must admit 
that such thoughts are very natural; but the 
trouble is that they are only natural, while God 
is spirit, and for this reason, if for no other, 
he cannot possibly be discerned in this way. 

But it does not follow, as some would have 
us think, that because God cannot be realized 



l6 BASAL TRUTHS. 



through the medium of the physical senses, 
that we must therefore remain in total igno- 
rance concerning him ; for there are many 
things realized in the experience of every 
day, which are, in a large degree, subject to 
this same law. 

Thought and affection, considered in them- 
selves, are incapable of manifestation to the 
senses. We cannot handle an idea, or see a 
thought, or taste the sweetness of an affection, 
in the literal and real sense in which we ask 
for the vision of the Most High. We can 
only show our thoughts by giving them a 
material setting. We can only reveal our affec- 
tions by clothing them in material forms. And 
then, looking upon the setting and the form, 
we draw our conclusions concerning the exist- 
ence and the nature of the thoughts and feel- 
ings thus enshrined. 

We may reverently assert, that to a certain 
degree God has followed this same method 
in the revelation of himself to man. He has 



GOD. 17 

taken to himself the material form best known 
to man; man's own form, in fact; and through 
this medium of manifestation, has sought to 
make himself more fully known. 

But we must move carefully here. We must 
not assert that the divine becomes human; but 
only that Jehovah veiled himself in our human 
nature, that he might be better understood. 
God does not, in the more common sense, 
become man ; but he enshrines his divinity 
in a human form, for the purposes of the fuller 
revelation he desires to make to us, of himself, 
and of his love. The divine brought fully to 
the level of the human would be divine no 
longer. The divine simply enshrined in the 
human is still blessedly the same. 

Any human conception of God must neces- 
sarily be largely human in its character. To 
be of any conscious helpfulness to man, the 
Divine Being must have a human expression. 
And from this it follows that our methods of 
thinking of the Heavenly Father must be 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



largely the same as those by which we think 
of '' our fathers in the flesh." Finite minds 
cannot comprehend the infinite as such; and 
God must be manifested through a finite me- 
dium, before we can come to the knowledge 
of his nature, or discern the relations subsist- 
ing between himself and us. 

And yet there is a sense in which the knowl- 
edge of God becomes a necessity of our very 
being. Ignorance and misconception concern- 
ing his nature and character are not only fatal 
to piety and peace, but they are fatal to the 
free growth and full development of all in us 
that is worth possessing, — of all that really 
makes man, ma/i. 

Nature and providence speak of God, and 
speak for God ; but they do not clearly re- 
veal him. Creation is but his outer garment. 
Providence is but the chariot in which he 
rides forth to the accomplishment of his will. 
The starry worlds above us are but the lamps 
w^hich light him on his path. The great uni- 



GOD. 19 

verse, as a whole, is but the crystallization of 
his thought. These are not God. These are 
but faint and distant glimpses of the outgrowths 
of his divine almightiness. If we can obtain 
no nearer view than these afford, then we shall 
never know him in reality and truth. 

We therefore arrive, almost unconsciously, at 
the conclusion, that if we are to know God, 
it must be, and can only be, through a revela- 
tion made by God himself; and w^e may take 
it for granted that any such revelation will be 
reliable and trustworthy in the very highest 
degree. And this brings us face to face with 
the central inquiry, Has God made any such 
revelation of himself to man? 

Passing by the marvellous representations of 
the Deity which meet us in the written word, 
we point you to that '* great mystery of god- 
liness, God manifest in flesh;" God dwelling 
with man in the form and likeness of man, 
imprinting his footsteps on the things with 
which we are most familiar, holding intercourse 



20 BASAL TRUTHS. 

with US in our own language; and thus impart- 
ing to us, in a manner well within the limits of 
our comprehension, the completer knowledge 
of himself. 

Looking thus upon Jesus, we reverently and 
believingly declare that what he was, that 
God is. He was literally, Immanuel, '^ God 
with us." He was the revelation of God's spot- 
less innocence and purity; of his unbounded 
rectitude, and unvarying truth; of his over- 
awing majesty and illimitable love; and as we 
proceed with the study of the manifold graces 
which shine forth in him, we become more 
and more deeply convinced that we can see, 
and can only see, '' the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ." 

It may appear strange that in the study of 
such a theme we should pass over the valuable 
testimony of the written word. But recall the 
fact that knowledge is a growth through succes- 
sive stages, and that the idea of God, as presented 
in the Bible, grows gradually clearer as human 



GOD. 21 

capacity and intelligence increase. The Old 
Testament is largely a pathway into the New; 
and the New Testament, which is universally 
regarded as the greatest of our literary posses- 
sions, is chiefly occupied with the record of the 
revelation of God in Jesus Christ. 

We do not of course deny that the Old 
Testament contains a revealment of God ; but 
it is the great and incomprehensible Jehovah 
we there behold. The dark clouds which rest 
upon Sinai, through which we obtain some 
glimpses of God in the aspect of a stern and 
arbitrary sovereign, must be tinged with the 
sublime radiance of that great sunset which 
occurred on Calvary, before the sovereign can 
be transfigured into the Father, and Jehovah 
be seen as the God of love. But in the New 
Testament the clouds of parable and dark 
saying have been rifted, the veils have been 
rent, the walls of partition have been torn 
away, and we see in Jesus the brightness of 
the divine glory, the express image of our 



22 BASAL TRUTHS. 



God. The broad chasm between the human 
and the divine is spanned by the one wide- 
sweeping arch of the incarnation ; and we 
stand in the very presence of the revelation 
for which we seek. 

What then do we learn of God in Jesus, that 
the world had not fully known before? 

Our answer to this important question must 
necessarily be brief, for the broad realm of our 
Saviour's earthly career cannot be traversed in 
a single hour. But just as the planets blaze 
forth in their richer glory, amid the paler but 
still beauteous light of the surrounding stars, 
so there are distinguishing features in the 
character of Jesus, and certain truths which 
shine resplendent in his teachings, from w^hich 
we may select by way of illustration. Even 
these we must present in bare and meagre 
outlines ; but we do so in the hope that, your 
thought being directed into these channels, you 
may go forward and work out the details of the 
glorious revelation for yourselves. 



GOD. 23 

But before referring specifically to these 
qualities and characteristics, we must ask you 
to pause and think this thought. If Jesus is 
divine, if he is '' the Word," and the Word is 
God ; then these distinguishing features of his 
character are nothing less than the character- 
istics of God himself 

With this thought well to the front, take 
up the study of the principle of goodness, as 
it finds embodiment in his daily life. In that 
life, goodness is carried to a degree of perfec- 
tion which amazes even the best and holiest 
of men. It is all-embracing, and all-control- 
ling; without limit in any direction, and with- 
out hindrance at any point. 

We have mentioned it first, here, because 
it is the dominant chord in his harmonious 
career. It is regnant in his every thought. 
It gives its own rich color to his every word. 
It stamps itself indelibly upon his every deed. 
There is, therefore, no need that we pause for 
specific illustrations. His life is one great illus- 
tration in itself, from first to last. 



24 BASAL TRUTHS. 



Now apply the thought just given, and what 
is the result? Is it not this? If goodness is 
the distino-uishin^^ feature of the life of Him 
who came to reveal God, then we are led to 
the indisputable conclusion that goodness forms 
the basal element in the character of God him- 
self. And in the reaching of this simple con- 
clusion, we have built a permanent foundation 
on which we may stand securely while striving 
to press forward into the deeper knowledge of 
Him in whom we fain w^ould trust. 

As we pursue this line of thought still further, 
one of the first things we discover is, that the 
God we have so often shunned, the Being we 
have regarded with an awe amounting at times 
to a positive dread, is so full of tenderness 
and compassion, so infinite in goodness and 
in grace, that no sacrifice is too great for him 
to make for our welfare, even to the giving of 
his only-begotten and well-beloved Son. 

Or, take a second thought, and study it 
from the same view-point. Can a righteous 



GOD. 



25 



God forgive the wilful breaking of his law? 
Can sin be pardoned, and the sinner be rein- 
stated in the divine favor, and thus recover 
his lost peace? 

What sadder story than that of the fall of 
Peter stands anywhere recorded on the his- 
tory of the world's past? No need to repeat 
the wearisome and terrible details. They are 
but too familiar to us all. But our inquiry is. 
How did Jesus deal with this base ingrate? 
Did he spurn him from his presence, and 
drive him into the outer darkness of isolation 
and contempt? The story of the Saviour's 
patient forbearance, his gentle pity, and his 
generous help to his fallen but penitent disci- 
ple, forms one of the most tender and complete 
illustrations of a disinterested and unselfish love 
with which we have been made acquainted since 
human history began. 

But as we look yet more closely at the Christ- 
character, we find that the example we have 
quoted is but one among many; and that this 



26 BASAL TRUTHS. 

was the spirit which dominated his Hfe through- 
out. And again we assert that if Jesus is divine, 
and the revealer of the divine mind and will to 
men, then his treatment of the fallen Peter is 
a picture of God's treatment of the race ; and 
that if the same spirit of repentance and reform 
were manifested by all men, we can see no 
reason why all should not be forgiven, and 
restored to the same happy relations to the 
common Father, which Peter afterwards en- 
joyed with Jesus Christ. 

This opens the way to a third thought. In 
the study of the life and character of Jesus, 
we see that God and man can really enter into 
the most intimate and tender fellowship. 

As we approach this part of our subject, 
we desire to emphasize the statement that 
until we have realized this, we have failed to 
grasp one of the greatest truths which the 
coming of the Christ was meant to teach. It 
is not enough that we see him living a perfect 
human life; carrying our infirmities without 



GOD. 



27 



falling beneath the load ; laying the physical 
at the feet of the spiritual ; and subordinating 
the human to the divine. We must see him 
linking the divine and human into oneness; 
and we must see this as the great mission of 
his career. 

Do you not discern that the doctrine of 
Christ's true and proper divinity carries with 
it all this, and more? Is it not clear to you, 
that the relations he sustained to men, both 
saints and sinners, are veritable revelations of 
the relations sustained to us by God? Any- 
thing less than this is but a surface view of 
his career at best. He moves among men as 
the exponent of the divine mind, and will, 
and heart; and not merely as an example of 
human purity and perfectness. He reveals to 
us, at every point, the fact that God is not 
far removed from, and indifferent to, the affairs 
of his creatures ; but that he dwells among us, 
seeks to influence our thought, to regulate our 
conduct, to guide our waywardness, and to 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



bind us to himself; to link his life with ours, 
our life with his. 

To have witnessed just once, as we see it 
in the Christ, the possibility of such a union, 
is, in itself, an advance upon all the revelations 
which had gone before ; and casts a golden 
halo about the sublime destiny which God has 
planned for us, which no man who is not 
wilfully blind need fail to see. 

Consider, in this light, those tender words 
of Jesus which relate to the peaceful future 
of his followers; and see how they illuminate 
the great truth that it is not the will of God 
that any man should perish, but that all should 
rise to the felicities of an eternal life in his own 
presence. 

To understand him fully when he says, 
^^Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" and 
especially as he makes the sublimer declara- 
tion, '' I am the resurrection and the life ; '' 
we must recognize the statements themselves 



GOD. 29 

as the utterances of the Infinite and Eternal 
One. We must see that it is divinity uttering 
. itself through humanity, just as the soul utters 
itself through the body; and that the connec- 
tion is as close and real in the one case as in 
the other. But if we can realize this, then we 
may also feel that Deity stands in relations to 
us, as simple and as real as those which sub- 
sisted between the Saviour and his followers; 
and that the revelations of the divine to us, 
may be as direct and definite as those he 
made to them. 

We have, then, in the Incarnation, God's 
answer to our call for a fuller and completer 
knowledge of himself To look steadily past 
this sublime manifestation, and to persist in 
seeking for God in the dim and shadowy dis- 
tances of human speculations, whether philo- 
sophical, or scientific, or theological, is an 
error so palpable as to border closely upon 
the realm of sin. 

If we had confined ourselves strictly to the 



30 BASAL TRUTHS. 

Statements of the written word, which is the 
more common method of procedure in studies 
of this class, the result would still have been 
the same. At the opening of that record we 
see God in the visible creation proceeding from 
his power; and, at the end, we see him in the 
visible Christ proceeding from his love ; and 
we again assert that, what Christ was, that 
God is. He is the Alpha and Omega ; the 
beginning and the end are one. 



II. 

MAN. 



" When God created man, His last and best work, 
this was as if a king, having built a great city, and 
adorned it with many and various works, after he had 
perfected all, should command a very great and beau- 
tiful image of himself to be set up in the midst of 
the city, to show who was the builder of it." 

Theodorus Mopsiiestejius, 




11. 

MAN. 

So God created man in his own i^nage} 

In the sublime and fascinating narrative of 
creation, with which our Scriptures open, we 
have come into possession of a vast fund of 
information concerning the origin of the things 
we see about us, which could only have been 
imparted by the Being in whose all-compre- 
hending mind the visible universe had its birth. 
If it is true that none but God could create, it 
is also true that none but God could reveal. 
With the method of this revelation we are not 
just now concerned. The nature of the story 
bespeaks its origin as divine ; and with this we 
are content. 

^ Genesis i. 27. 



34 BASAL TRUTHS. 



This study of the origin of things gathers 
much of its fascination from the fact that crea- 
tion is the utterance of God's thought, the mak- 
incr visible of the workings of his own mind 
and will. Our science tells us that in the uni- 
verse thus created, there are evidences of a 
growth from the lower to the higher; and our 
Scriptures open up to us the vision of the divine 
thought, first bringing order out of chaos, and 
then advancing step by step to the creation of 
man, as the crown and consummation of the 
whole. 

On the morning of the sixth day, the Divine 
Being looked out upon the material universe in 
its completed form. The darkness which had 
mantled over chaos was dispelled. Sea and 
land occupied their own distinctive spheres. 
Verdure and beauty clothed the landscape with 
garments of loveliness, and the myriad forms of 
life. had already entered upon the work of peop- 
ling the green earth with reproductions of them- 
selves. But, as yet, there was no perceiving 



MAN. 



35 



mind to gather up creation's lesson, and no 
reflecting soul to offer its adoring love to Him 
from whom creation sprang. 

Then God said, " Let us make man in our 
image, after our likeness ; and let him have do- 
minion over the fish of the sea, and over the 
fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over 
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth ; " and, the resolution 
being thus formed, it was instantly carried into 
effect, — and God made '* man in his own 
image," as our text declares. 

Man is, therefore, the last and fullest expres- 
sion of God's thought. In him the creature be- 
comes intelligent, self-conscious, endowed with 
will, and capable, to some extent, of meeting 
with, and understanding his Creator. In him, 
God finds room for the utterance, not merely of 
his wisdom and his power, but for that which is 
most profoundly moral and spiritual in his own 
nature. In him, God finds a creature who can 
sympathize with his purposes, who can respond 



36 BASAL TRUTHS. 

to his affection, and can offer scope and field 
for the exercise and display of the whole ful- 
ness of his plans and aims. 

Man is a compound, or more properly, a com- 
plex being. He is a link between the material 
and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, 
the temporal and the eternal. On the bodily 
side he is but dust ; while on the spiritual side 
he is an emanation from the ail-creating God. 
Both phases of his being are equally mysterious 
and perplexing; and both bespeak the same 
infinitude of care and skill. 

If we regard man's body we are amazed at its 
comeliness and its utility. The adaptation of 
the several members to the particular functions 
they are fashioned to perform, is a study for a 
lifetime ; while the bringing of all these mem- 
bers under the control of a central will, is the 
unsolved puzzle, not of the physiologist alone, 
but of the race at large. Perfect in structure, 
and matchless in form, the human body has no 
parallel in nature, and no superior in the realm 
of created things. 



MAN- 



37 



Of the nature of the soul we are wholly igno- 
rant. We may define the soul as the life-power 
of the body; but how the soul imparts life to 
the body no living man can tell. Soul and body 
are so closely and mysteriously interlinked into 
each other that both are necessary to man's 
existence here ; but how and why this is so, we 
are entirely unable to discern. 

But we have come to discover that the soul is 
not the body, and that the body is not the real 
man. Some one has said that '* man is not a 
body enshrining a soul ; but he is a soul wear- 
ing a body ; " and early in the history of our 
literature, Edmund Spenser sang, and, in a 
sense, sang truly: — 

'' For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make." 

Nor must we overlook the further fact that 
just as man is in himself the connecting link 
between the material and the spiritual, embody- 
ing and illustrating both these phases of being, 



38 BASAL TRUTHS. 



SO the intellectual nature in man forms a con- 
necting link between the body and the soul, 
partaking of both, dependent on both, yet dif- 
ferent from either, or from both combined. It 
furnishes a means of communication between 
the two, and brings both into closer connection 
with the world without; but its greatest worth 
lies in the fact that it furnishes the only avail- 
able means or medium for the study of man 
himself. 

But in considering man, amid our present 
limitations, it is both natural and necessary that 
we confine ourselves mainly to the study of that 
one phase of his being which stands more di- 
rectly connected with our text. 

This we regard as the moral side of man's 
nature ; for, while it is true that it is in his mind 
and soul that man takes on the image of God, 
and that it is through the mind that we must 
seek to trace this likeness ; yet it is not merely 
in his general capacity to know, but in his 
special capacities for the knowing and doing of 



MAN. 



39 



the right, that we shall discover the brightest 
and clearest manifestations of the divine ele- 
ment in him. We therefore turn from the hope- 
less task of striving to present his whole nature 
to the view, that we may glance at him as a 
creature formed for the companionship of his 
Creator, and destined to be with him, not only 
w^here He is, but as He is. 

But before proceeding, we shall do well to 
note that we are not about to look for God in 
man, but only for God's image. To forget the 
limitations and restrictions under which we now 
exist, is to render our present study hopeless 
from the first. 

For example: Man lives, but God is life. 
Man loves, but God is love. Man is spiritual, 
but God is spirit. Man is finite, but God is 
infinite. But while narrow in their range and 
scope, man's faculties and powers are the same 
in order and nature with those which constitute 
the mind and character of the Lord Most 
High. 



40 BASAL TRUTHS. 



At a few of the more prominent character- 
istics of man's moral nature we now desire to 
look ; and to seek in these for those traces of 
the heavenly and the divine, which our text 
would lead us to believe that we possess, — 
those flashes of divine light which form the dis- 
tinguishing marks of man's present, and the 
foregleams of the exalted destiny, which, if the 
text be true, must of necessity await us in the 
not far distant future. 

The basal factor in man's moral being is the 
Will. This is the central and the dominating 
force in the shaping of his character, and the 
regulating of his conduct. It sits enthroned 
among his faculties as king, and its rule is all- 
powerful, whether for good or ill. It is the 
power above all others which gives to man his 
individuality ; and no man is, or can be, master 
of himself, until he has brought this master- 
faculty into subjection, and feels himself able to 
hold it under control. Goethe has said that 
'' He who is firm in will moulds the world to 



MAN. 



4t 



himself; " but we would rather say, He who has 
conquered his will may go forward and mould 
the w^orld to his own liking. 

The will influences the intellect. It holds the 
mind to the study of a certain object, or it turns 
it resolutely away. Making its selections from 
the great streams of thought which the imagi- 
nation or the reasoning power causes to flow 
through the mind, it virtually takes control of 
the life at its very beginnings. It puts its strong 
hand upon that floodgate, the raising or lower- 
ing of which puts our whole being into a whirl 
of intense activity, or reduces it to the silence 
of inaction, as the case may be. 

The will sways the heart. It touches the 
fountains of our affection, determines our likes 
and dislikes, colors our dispositions and frames 
our tempers, imprints its stamp upon our feel- 
ings and directs our impulses ; and, to a far 
greater degree than we imagine, it makes us 
what we are. 

Now it is in the possession of this great and 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



free-moving agent or faculty, that we catch our 
first ghmpse of the image of God in man. The 
divine and the human will are ahke in order and 
character, though different in degree. The will 
of man is mighty, the will of God is almighty; 
but in essence they are very much the same. 

God willed, and creation in all its multiform 
beauty and variety sprang into being at his 
command. Man wills, and his whole life, in all 
its thousand avenues of expression, falls into 
line with the will's behest. God's will is scarcely 
more regnant in the universal sphere, than is 
man's will in the more limited sphere in w^hich 
he lives and moves. Indeed, man's will even 
rises at times into an open opposition to the will 
of the Almighty; and the moral conflict of the 
ages is neither more nor less than a long-contin- 
ued and hard-fought battle between the human 
will and the divine. 

But we must leave this thought and pass to 
the consideration of a second, which may be 
stated thus : While the will is a powerful factor 



MAN. 



43 



in the human character, it is by no means the 
most powerful of our possessions. 

We have spoken of the necessity of mastering 
the will, and bringing it into subjection; but it 
is foolish thus to speak, unless it can be shown 
that we possess a yet stronger gift, by the aid 
of which this victory may be won. We there- 
fore proceed to say that over and above the 
human will stands the human Reason; and 
that in this gift of reason we catch our second 
glimpse of the image of God in man. 

In his power to reason man stands entirely 
apart from all the forms of created being of 
which we have any positive knowledge. That 
there are many forms of animal life which are 
endowed with the power of thought, up to a 
certain standard or degree, and which give evi- 
dence of the possession of intelligence, though 
of a lower order than our own, we can m.ake 
no manner of question. But that there is any 
other form of creature that reasons we most 
emphatically deny. 



44 BASAL TRUTHS. 



To make good this position, we may briefly 
state what it is to reason ; and strive to show 
how this power stands related to the Hfe, con- 
sidered as a whole. 

To reason is more than to think. It is the 
power to compare two thoughts with each other, 
and from these to deduce a third, which, while 
it partakes of both, is really in advance of both. 
And reason is more than knowledge. It is the 
power to weigh and measure, to sift and analyze 
knowledge ; to separate the probable from the 
improbable, the true from the untrue, and to 
gather from those vast masses of extraneous 
thought, which ever present themselves to the 
mind, the permanent and the healthful, and 
engraft these into the life for its future better- 
ment and growth. 

A beaver builds a dam and builds it upon 
what we are pleased to call mechanical princi- 
ples ; but with the completion of the material 
structure, the limit of his knowledge has been 
reached. Man beholds the result of the beaver's 



MAN. 



45 



labor, and makes it the beginning of his own. 
By the aid of reason he carries the process for- 
ward into the realm of practical mechanics, and 
turns its wheels, or raises its levers, or creates 
its pressures, as his necessity demands, and thus 
puts the dam to a thousand uses such as the 
beaver did not, and could not know. That 
thought is the parent of knowledge, in both 
cases, is beyond a doubt; but reason applies the 
forms of knowledge presented by thought to 
the actual requirements of the daily life. 

In like manner the understanding deals mainly 
with facts and things, while the reason seeks for 
the truths and lessons which those facts and 
things contain. As thought or imagination pre- 
sents an object to the mind, reason brings out 
its scales and weighs it. It judges of the expe- 
diency, the propriety, and the consequences of 
following that object; and, by its peculiar but 
powerful processes, brings these ultimate results 
to light, and invests them with their own weight 
and force, in the settlement of all matters upon 



46 BASAL TRUTHS. 



which they bear. Thus we may regard the 
reason as the regulator of the Hfe, answering 
exactly the same purpose as that which is 
wrought out by the mechanical regulator on the 
engine, or in the clock. 

This regulative power in man is of the great- 
est value. It links his outward actions to a long 
line of inward motives and causes. It asks and 
answers the questions, Why should I do this? 
or, Why should I not do that? It removes life 
from the blind realm of force, and places it 
under the strong hand of intelligent judgment; 
controlling its issues by appeals to motive, and 
showing good cause for every course of conduct 
to which it prompts us. 

As man reaches the question why, even ma- 
terial things grow moral ; and as he rises higher 
on the planes of right and wrong, and moves in 
closer accord with those principles of rectitude 
to which an unprejudiced reason directs, he 
approximates more nearly to the image of his 
Maker, who never acts without an adequate 



MAN 47 

cause, and whose goodness appears in the fact 
that he makes all things to work together for 
the good of those who bring their reason into 
accord with his own all-gracious will. 

Our next thought is, that the life of the Affec- 
tions outranks both the Reason and the Will ; 
and that in his power to love we obtain another 
and yet brighter vision of the image of God in 
man. 

May we illustrate once again? The world of 
animal life furnishes many remarkable examples 
of this power to love. But, beyond a certain 
point, these manifestations of tenderness have 
scarcely anything in common with the love of 
man. From the cow in the adjoining meadow, 
or the tiger in the distant jungle, we may learn 
how deeply nature has implanted in all creatures 
the love of their offspring; the disposition to 
care for and protect their own. 

Among domesticated animals we catch 
glimpses of a love reaching beyond their own 
circle ; and may even discern something of the 



48 BASAL TRUTHS. 



elements of faithfulness and trust. But the dog 
loves only as he is loved. The affection of the 
horse is mainly a response to the kindness he 
receives. Treat one of these creatures harshly, 
and you are more than likely to make an enemy 
out of a would-be friend. 

But man, when his will has come into har- 
mony with the divine will, and his reason is 
regulated by the influences which touch him 
from above, learns to love his enemies, and to 
do good even to those who strive to work him 
ill; and this love, which is the highest type w^e 
know, and which has no counterpart in the 
lower orders of created being, is the outcome 
and reflection of the divine love ; it is the clear 
shining, in his better and nobler self, of the 
image of his God. 

All that we would have you see, at this point, 
is, that while differing in their measure, the di- 
vine and the human loves are the same in their 
nature and quality. God's love is as infinite as 
he is himself, and man's love is as finite as 



MAN. 



49 



man's mind ; but in all other respects, save this 
one matter of degree, they are exactly the 
same. 

There is no need that we extend our argu- 
ment further, although vast fields of thought he 
all untraversed at our very feet. In that myste- 
rious faculty which we call by the name of con- 
science, in our power to rise above the levels of 
the sense-life, and contemplate the purely spirit- 
ual, and in the inbred assurances of our personal 
immortality, and a score of other matters of 
this class, we might, if time permitted, find 
other confirmations of the truth our text 
declares. 

But we must forbear, and close by emphasiz- 
ing the thought, that it is this implanted likeness 
to our God which constitutes our highest man- 
hood ; and this truth may be clearly seen, both 
in the contemplation of the model man, and in 
the study of those who have fully consecrated 
themselves to God through him. 

The world has known for ages that personal 
4 



50 BASAL TRUTHS. 

character could rise higher than all else. But 
the world never knew how high it could rise 
until it gazed upon the spotless career of Jesus ; 
nor did it realize how often it does actually 
rise, until it began the task of numbering his 
followers. 

Above all else, Jesus taught us that there is 
a divine element in human nature. God has 
woven into the tissue of man's being somewhat 
of his veritable self. And until this divine ele- 
ment is cultured and cared for, and made to 
command all else in us, we cannot rise to the 
fulness and perfection of our being, even here. 

Through this element we have it in our power 
to make our work-shops, our laboratories, our 
stores, our studies, or our homes, places of mag- 
nificent inspiration, to enter which is to receive 
a baptism of power and hope ; while, by simply 
neglecting this, we have it in our power to make 
of these selfsame places such centres of misery, 
depression, and disappointment, as shall render 
them a constant curse. 



MAN. 



51 



To realize our highest possibihties we must 
look often at the model. We must dwell much 
upon the wondrous revelation of ourselves which 
he exhibits to the view ; for just as we gain our 
truest views of God in the study of Jesus, so do 
we obtain our truest estimate of man in him. 

All the known and unknown varieties of moral 
excellence found in him their common centre. 
He exhibited to the world the tenderest sensi- 
bility and the calmest judgment it has ever been 
privileged to behold. He displayed the highest 
greatness and the deepest lowliness of which 
our nature is capable. Standing forth in our 
sinful world, he was untouched by any of its 
thousand forms of wrong; and yet he possessed 
a more than human gentleness in his treatment 
of the wrong-doer; and, in a word, united in 
himself all those excellences which we look for 
in our God. 

" In him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily." His humanity was but a veil through 
which streamed, in a softened and humanized 



52 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



radiance, the otherwise insufferable effulgence of 
the Eternal One. Still, through it all, he stood 
side by side with us; and any human char- 
acter approximates perfection as it approaches 
the standard of true manhood which he exhib- 
ited. We are true men as we are like him ; we 
fail of true manhood as w^e recede from him. 

The lesson of the wdiole may therefore be 
embodied in a closing thought. God made man 
in his own image, and in Jesus he has made that 
image plain. Let it be our great life-work to 
cultivate and bring to perfection the graces 
which Jesus manifested here ; and as these shine 
grandly forth in us, the w^orld at large shall be- 
hold in us, as in a polished mirror, the lovely 
and all-glorious image of our Lord and King. 



I 



III. 

S I N. 



" The wages that sin bargains with the sinner are 
Hfe, pleasure, and profit ; but the wages it pays him 
with are death, torment, and destruction : he that 
would understand the falsehood and deceit of sin 
thoroughly, must compare its promises and its pay- 
ments together." — Robert South. 




III. 

S I N. 

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the 
law ; for sin is the transgression of the law} 

We have already been privileged to enter 
into a consideration of God and Man; the one 
as the Creator of all things, and the other as 
the highest outcome of his creative skill. But 
if we have observed the processes of creation 
with ordinary care, we have doubtless discov- 
ered that a single plan or purpose runs through 
all, like a line of burnished gold. 

The world which comes forth from the divine 
hand, is vocal and vital with this one idea. 
A thousand converging lines of evidence point 
to the fact that it was built as a home for man, 

1 I John iii. 4. 



56 BASAL TRUTHS. 

and was fitted throughout with a view to the 
meeting of his specific needs. All that is, 
exists for his sake. It is as easy to trace this 
primary relation of the material universe to 
the requirements of the human family, as to 
behold in it the omnipotence of its Creator, 
or to discern the glory of the conceptions in 
which it originated in his mind. 

Endowed with physical freedom, man ranges 
over the realm of matter at his will. Roaming 
the forest, climbing the mountain, piercing the 
clouds, and ploughing the ocean, he eats of 
the fruit of every clime, quaffs every cup of 
pleasure which the material world affords, and 
counts himself as owner and monarch of the 
whole. Intellectually free, he wades the rapid 
fords of thought, breasting its mightiest cur- 
rents, and coming forth in safety on its further 
shore. He rises to the sublimest heights, de- 
scends to the profoundest depths, and grasps 
the innermost secrets of the world of knowl- 
edge, and holds them with the same sense of 



SIN. 



57 



proprietary right. Morally free, he traverses 
the great highways of good and ill, and even 
undertakes, at times, to create the standards 
by which the right and wrong of things shall 
be determined. 

Yet there is no truth more clearly revealed 
than that man is under law. Notwithstanding 
his claims to originality and independence, 
the facts of daily life go to show that every 
phase of his being is controlled and governed 
by a force which does not centre in himself. 

If he violates the laws of his physical being, 
he weakens his physical constitution, and hastens 
his physical decay. If he violates the laws of 
his intellectual being, he narrows the scope of 
his thought-power, and decreases his capacity to 
know. If he violates the laws of his moral being, 
he deadens his moral sensibilities, blunts the fine 
edge of his nobler feelings, and decreases his 
capacity for discerning right and wrong. 

We have already striven to show that man 
entered upon his career in uprightness; that 



58 BASAL TRUTHS. 



he was made in the image of God. This may 
be seen in his nature, as well as learned from 
revelation ; by which we mean to say that 
traces of his original moral greatness may be 
discerned in him even yet; though the marks 
of his present degradation have well-nigh oblit- 
erated the stamp of moral rectitude which he 
bore as he came forth from the hand of his 
Maker at the first. 

That he has undergone a mighty and radical 
change ; that he does not stand in the same 
relations to God as those he occupied in the 
beginning ; are facts which we may gather from 
a study of the changes which have taken place 
within himself These changes are of such a 
nature as to intimate most distinctly that some- 
thing has interfered with the original constitu- 
tion of things, and that, both in himself and 
in his circumstances, he has suffered most 
serious damage. 

The disturbing element which thus defaces 
the divine image in man, and narrows him in 



SIN. 59 

every phase of his being, we call by the name 
of sin ; and to discover as much as we can 
of its nature and character, is the object of 
our present discourse. 

Human theories and speculations concerning 
the origin of evil are too numerous and too 
varied to be considered here. Even the latest 
of our scientific attempts to account for the 
presence of sin in human nature, — that of 
the evolutionists, — is fully as unsatisfactory as 
those which have gone before. But we may 
glance at this latest theory for a moment, and 
enter upon the study of our subject at this 
point. 

The evolutionist necessarily denies that man 
was originally pure. Such an admission would 
destroy the very foundations on which his argu- 
ments must rest. The doctrines of evolution 
begin with the idea that the first man was a 
savage; a sort of human animal at best. He 
is represented as fierce and indolent, greedy 
and passionate, low and vile ; and the moral 



6o BASAL TRUTHS. 



evil of to-day is regarded as a remnant of the 
low and savage dispositions of the days gone 
by. 

In this view, sin is nothing more than in- 
herited animalism ; and we are asked to believe 
that with the triumph of civilization, to be 
accomplished by the w^orkings of the great 
laws of *' natural selection,'' and ^' the survival 
of the fittest," society will continue to grow 
better and purer with the onward roll of the 
ages, and sin will eventually disappear entirely 
from our midst. 

For the refutation of this false and perni- 
cious doctrine, it is only necessary to recall 
the well-known and generally admitted fact, 
that our growing civilization is marked by a 
growth of sin which steadily keeps pace with 
man's advancements on every other line. The 
increase of moral light which bursts from time 
to time upon our world, not only enhances our 
sense of human wickedness, and makes its 
depravity more plain; but new developments 



SIN. 6 1 

of civilization open the way to new forms of 
crime, and evils unknown to the ancients are 
everywhere current in our modern forms of 
life. 

We shall also do well to note, in this con- 
nection, that the faculties furthest removed from 
animalism and savagery are as truly ministers 
of sin in us, as are the lowest elements of 
our nature. The refined and elaborated forms 
of rascality and vice which dominate the life 
of the nineteenth century are as truly iniquitous 
as were the crimes which sprang from the wild 
licentiousness and brutal ferocity w^hich char- 
acterized the half-savage life of ten centuries 
ago. And, added to it all, there remains that 
saddest fact of all ; that crimes as brutal as 
ever blackened the pages of human history in 
its darkest periods are still among us, as in 
days of yore. 

In view of all this, shall we not do better to 
accept the more reasonable and simple declara- 
tions of the word of truth, which asserts that 



62 BASAL TRUTHS. 



God created man in innocency, but placed him 
under law; and that sin, with all its attend- 
ant evils, arises directly and distinctively from 
the transgression of the decrees of God? Is 
not this view exactly in harmony with the 
teaching of our text; '* Whosoever committeth 
sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the 
transgression of the law." 

The acceptance of this Scriptural setting of 
the origin of evil simpUfies our entire study 
in a most wonderful degree, and opens up to 
us vast fields of information, both in regard to 
the nature of sin, and also, as to its cure. 

The primary signification both of the Greek 
and Hebrew words for sin is '' the missing of 
a mark;" or still more sharply defined, ''the 
falling short of a mark." It is apparently 
gathered from the idea of an arrow, shot from 
the bow, but falling to the ground before the 
target has been reached. So that the Bible 
view of sin is that it is a coming short of our 
true destiny; a failure to reach and strike the 



SIN. 63 

mark which God has set before us as the true 
goal of human attainment. 

That goal is likeness to himself; and it is an 
acknowledged fact that as man draws nearer to 
God, he experiences an increase of satisfaction 
and of peace ; while as he feels himself to be 
receding from God, he experiences an increase 
of disquiet and unrest. The only real and abid- 
ing harmony possible to man, begins in the har- 
mony of his will w^ith the divine will, and ends 
with the harmony of his life with the divine 
life. Sin is the principle which militates against 
this, and causes us to stop short, or fall short, 
of this most desirable end. 

Or, take the figure of the text. Human 
duty is represented in Scripture as a pathway, 
in which we are commanded to walk. To sin 
is to transgress, that is, to cross the line by 
which the path of duty is bounded. So that 
it again becomes apparent that moral evil is 
not, as some have charged, a specific creation 
of God, but a definite and distinctive act of 



64 BASAL TRUTHS. 



man. It is the violation of the divine com- 
mand, the transgression of the laws laid down 
by God for man's guidance in the path which 
leads into his own presence ; those laws which 
tend to the furtherance of man's highest inter- 
ests, and the promotion of his truest welfare. 

With the ten commandments as recorded 
by Moses, and the wondrous epitome of these 
contained in the golden rule of Jesus, standing 
open to our view, it is not necessary that we 
enter into an exposition of the requirements 
which the law of God lays down. We shall 
do better, perhaps, if we hold ourselves more 
closely to our theme, and strive to possess our- 
selves of a fuller knowledge of the influence 
and working of disobedience, as manifested in 
the life of every day. 

We may bring the subject more within the 
range of our comprehension, by noting the 
following points. Sin is visibly present among 
us. As we read in Scripture that ^' the heart 
is deceitful above all things, and desperately 



SIN. 65 

wicked;" or, ** the whole head is sick, and 
the whole heart faint," the statements sound 
harsh and unpalatable, to say the least. But 
we are not to make of this a question of likes 
and dislikes, but of falsity or truth ; so that 
the problem before us is, Do we observe, in 
ourselves or others, evidences of a demoraliza- 
tion which at all coincides with statements of 
this class? 

Perhaps it may be easier for us to discern 
the radical departure of man from God and 
truth, if we take a broad view of society as a 
whole. And as we do so, we are speedily 
convinced, not merely that sin is visibly pres- 
ent among us, but that sin is unive7'sally present 
among us. 

If the Bible statements concerning the de- 
pravity and degradation of human nature are 
unpalatable, w^e may, for the moment, set 
them aside, and settle the matter without the 
aid of Scripture. The current newspapers will 
answer our present purpose just as well. In 

5 



66 BASAL TRUTHS. 



to-morrow's issue of any one of our great dailies, 
you may learn hov/ men are transgressing the 
divine law; and that, not in our exalted Amer- 
ica alone ; but in the reports of human doings 
which reach us from the icebound shores of 
Greenland, and the sunlit strands of India; 
from amid the intellectual development of 
Western Europe, and the muscular develop- 
ment of Eastern xAsia ; from the palaces of 
human greatness, and from the hovels of human 
shame ; with some varieties as to form and 
degree, you may read what is practically the 
same record as that furnished by the book of 
God itself. 

In fact, if we will be honest and true, we 
must admit that the wide-ranging sweeps of 
human thought and influence are made to do 
duty as wings for the carrying abroad over 
the face of the whole earth, of those forms 
of evil which are opposed to the law of God, 
and to the best interests of man. 

This leads us to say that it is in the nature 



SIN. 



67 



of sin to diffuse itself. Taking possession of 
our human being, it uses all the faculties and 
forces of that being for the furtherance of 
its own dissemination and increase. 

It may appear strange that the streams of 
human energy and influence should be made 
to float the black-hulled crafts of evil; but 
who among us fails to see that this is really 
so? Do we not constantly find that evil men 
are laboring to bring others into the same lines 
of thought and action which they themselves 
pursue? Was Paul wide of the mark when 
he said, *' Evil communications corrupt good 
manners;" or ** good morals," as it ought to 
read? 

Rather let us declare that every look of a 
living form is a force in human affairs; every 
word a power for good or ill ; every act holds 
enshrined within itself the power of reproduc- 
tion after its own kind; and every imagination 
of the human heart is an arrow tipped with 
the promise of the life eternal, or winged with 



68 BASAL TRUTHS. 



the black feathers of a coming woe. It there- 
fore follows, that man, in the extension of his 
influence, multiplies himself continually; so 
that the heart of an evil man is a veritable 
seed-bed for the propagation of evil ; and the 
life of a good man is, in like manner, pro- 
ductive of a vast increase of good. 

But sin is not only capable of a wide diffusion 
among our fellows, but it is equally capable 
of a sturdy growth within ourselves. 

Good old Robert Leighton has well said 
that '' Sin is first pleasing, then frequent, then 
habitual, then confirmed ; then man is impen- 
itent, then he is obstinate, then he is resolved 
never to repent, then he is ruined." And our 
own experience confirms the fact that sin, 
beginning though it often does in matters 
which appear most trivial, soon grows into a 
master-force in the soul; and that the gossa- 
mer threads with which it binds us at the 
first, too often develop into cords we cannot 
break. The power of sinful habit has long 



SIN. 69 

since passed into a proverb among us; and 
hence it is the part of wisdom to guard against 
sin's earHest and sHghtest taint. 

Not only has the Church of Rome distin- 
guished between mortal and venial sins, a 
distinction nowhere countenanced in Scripture, 
but we ourselves are too much in the habit 
of raising distinctions quite as false as that 
we here object to. We speak of great sins, 
and little sins; forgetting that no such dis- 
tinctions can exist in the view of God. '' Sin 
is the transgression of the law;" and every 
transgression of the law is sin. 

The only measure which can in any sense 
be applied here is the measure of our moral 
and spiritual light; that is, the measure of our 
knowledge of the nature of the acts we do. 
Judas was, in this sense, the greatest sinner 
of his day ; not merely because he treacher- 
ously gave over his Master, to whom he had 
sworn fealty, into the hands of his cruel foes ; 
but because in so doing he sinned against the 



70 BASAL TRUTHS. 



highest Hght, and betrayed the divinest good- 
ness ; a goodness of which he had received 
such overwhelming proofs as to place the 
matter beyond all doubt. 

And this leads us to say that while the 
sinful tendency is found in every man, yet no 
man is himself a sinner, until he knowingly 
and wilfully yields to that tendency, and breaks 
the law of God ; and the measure of his iniquity 
is the measure of his knowledge and his wil- 
fulness. " The times of man's ignorance God 
winked at; but now" that the light has shone 
forth clearly, '' he commands all men every- 
where to repent." 

The sin of the first man occupies an impor- 
tant place in the study of the general question, 
because, as we have seen, it was a free act 
from which a course of life proceeded, con- 
tradicting the original nature of man, and 
tending to destroy in him the image of his 
God ; but the sin with which we are concerned, 
is our own individual transgression of the 



SIN. 71 

divine law, and is only proportioned, as to 
its guilt, by the clearness with which that law 
has been revealed to our own minds and 
hearts. 

If we look honestly at the consequences of 
what we consider to be our smaller sins, we 
shall find that they are the fertile sources of 
a large proportion of the misery and disorder 
which disfigure and disgrace us. The noblest 
minds carry a spirit of lofty conscientiousness 
into all things, and aim at excellence in all. 
Whatever is duty to them carries with it the 
command to discharge it well. They strive to 
live as in the eye of God, and every thought, 
word, and deed is wrought out as if for his 
approval. The opinions of men are placed 
in the background, and the aim of every true 
life is to bring its *' all things '* into conformity 
with the law of God, in every particular, and 
at every point. 

As to the cure of sin, our words must here 
be few; but in the discourses to follow, this 



^2 BASAL TRUTHS. 

matter will by no means be neglected. At 
the present, we have only space to say that 
sin has evinced its entire hostility to the wel- 
fare of the race at large ; and that, over and 
over again, man has proved his inability to 
restore himself to the position he has lost, 
by and through the instrumentality of his own 
unaided powers. Left to himself, he does not 
develop in the direction of purity and holi- 
ness, as we have already striven to show. 

The inference to be drawn from the history 
of the race is, that man needs the constant 
pressure of a moral force upon his nature, or 
he is constantly going astray from the paths 
of right. He requires the presence and aid 
of just those influences which we associate with 
the idea of God, and requires these in their 
truest and intensest forms. The power of the 
human will is broken ; reason is greatly re- 
stricted and narrowed ; aff*ection has lost its 
keenness of edge, and its firmness of grip ; 
and over these faculties, in their weakened 
condition, sin can easily prevail. 



SIN. 73 

No outward refinements, nor the application 
of any material forms of force, can possibly 
eradicate it ; for its seat is in the moral, and 
not in the physical part of man's being ; and 
as the body is but the organ or instrument 
of sin, it is impossible to reach and extermi- 
nate it in this way. It must be crowded out 
of the life by the introduction of a new and 
spiritual principle ; and such a principle must 
of necessity spring from a spiritual source. 

At this point the divine mercy comes clearly 
into view. The very Being whose laws we 
have broken undertakes to assist us in es- 
caping the penalties which those broken laws 
entail. Not only does he seek to win us from 
the power of sin by the exhibition of the sin- 
less life of Jesus, but he offers us our freedom 
by and through Jesus' atoning death. Not 
only does he warn us, by the voice of his 
Spirit in our hearts, as to the sad results to 
which a continuance in sin will eventually lead ; 
but, in the gracious help and guidance of that 



74 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



Spirit, he places at our disposal the power by 
which the victory over sin may yet be won. 
Not only does he set forth in his word the 
requirements of his law, but he crowds its 
pages with directions as to how that law may 
be obeyed, and with elements of strength for 
the conflict through which every human being 
must attain the crown of blessedness and 
rest. 

Knowing our utter helplessness, if left to 
ourselves, he graciously declares himself to 
be our helper, and assures us that '^ with every 
temptation to wTong-doing he will make a 
way for our escape/' and that his grace shall 
be at our disposal in a measure abundantly 
sufficient for our safe deliverance from every 
battle with this alien force which seeks to 
lay us low. 

He bids us cast ourselves upon his bound- 
less mercy, and rest upon his unlimited might. 
If the forces of evil are powerful, God is all- 
powerful. If the conflict is long-continued and 



SIN. 



75 



severe, he declares, ^* And lo I am with you 
alway even unto the end." 

Let us therefore avail ourselves of his prof- 
fered aid, and become co-workers together with 
him in the resistance of every form of evil 
w^hich makes its appeal to our nature ; and the 
end shall be, that " where sin abounds, grace 
shall much more abound ; " and w^e shall attain 
unto that holiness of heart and life which is 
the passport into his presence, and the ground 
and substance of heaven's eternal peace. 



IV. 
REPENTANCE. 



" If you would be good, first believe that you are 
bad." — Epictetus. 



IV. 

REPENTANCE. 

Remember therefore from whence thou art 
fall en y and repent, ^ 

We have seen that God is the beginning and 
the Creator of all things; and that man is the 
noblest product of his creative skill, made in his 
own image, and for his own companionship. 
We have also striven to show that the image of 
God has been marred and defaced in man, by 
the action of a principle foreign to his original 
constitution ; the principle which we know by 
the name of sin. 

We have said that evil is a spiritual taint, a 
tendency to wrongdoing in man ; and that sin is 
that tendency developed into actual existence in 

1 Revelation ii. 5. 



8o BASAL TRUTHS. 

thouo-ht and deed. The ^reat calamitv of sin 
lies partly in the fact that it breaks the Hnks of 
connection between God and the soul. In so 
doincr, it cuts us off from all the blessed thincrs 
which come from above, and thus narrows and 
impoverishes our life on its higher or spiritual 
side. It really makes us outcasts from Him 
whose loving-kindness is better than life itself; 
and reduces us to a condition of misery which 
is proportioned by the measure of our spiritual 
light, and the depth and intensity of our devouter 
thought. 

If we really accept these, the conclusions we 
have professedly reached, then our present sub- 
ject follows in the order, and with the force of a 
logical sequence ; and we recognize a peculiar 
fitness as we read, " Remember therefore from 
whence thou art fallen, and repent." 

No careful reader of the Xew Testament can 
fail to observe the marked prominence which it 
gives to the theme now to be considered. It 
stands at the ver\' portal of the gospel plan of 



REPENTANCE. 8 1 



salvation as there expounded, and forms a sort 
of general introduction to its teachings on this 
point. It is the primal utterance in all the holy 
ministries of the New Testament period ; and the 
broad and sure foundation on which the ethical 
system of the new faith is made to rest. 

John the Baptist entered upon his w^ork by 
raising the cry, *' Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." Jesus declared to his hear- 
ers, *' Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." He also gave explicit direction to his 
apostles that ''repentance and remission of sins 
should be preached in his name to all nations ; " 
and the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles 
are but the record of the importance they at- 
tached to this command, and of the faithfulness 
with which they executed it. 

Coupled wdth faith, which is next to be con- 
sidered, repentance is laid down as a basal con- 
dition on w^hich man is to be reinstated in the 
divine favor and image ; and hence it follows 
that it is of the utmost importance that our 

6 



82 BASAL TRUTHS. 

understanding of its nature and its necessity 
should be both clear and true ; and it is to a 
consideration of these two points that we now 
ask your thoughtful attention. 

Repentance being the initial grace of the 
Christian career, it need not surprise us to find 
that it has been the subject of deep and profound 
study among the theologians of every age and 
creed. But while its definitions are more nu- 
merous by far than those of the sister graces, 
they show fewer material variations than do 
these. 

It may interest you to know that the literal 
meaning of the New Testament word for repent- 
ance is '' an afterview." Then it comes to sig- 
nify the change of mind in which this afterview 
results ; and then, the change of conduct conse- 
quent upon the change of mind. 

There is, therefore, not the slightest reason 
why we should not accept the common definition 
of repentance without the change of a single 
word. *^ Repentance unto life is a saving grace, 



REPENTANCE, 



83 



whereby a sinner, out of true sense of his sin, 
and an apprehension of the mercy of God in 
Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, 
turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and 
endeavor after, new obedience." 

To this definition we may add, before pro- 
ceeding, that our mental acts, as well as our 
physical acts, are subjects of repentance. By 
mental acts, we mean of course our thoughts 
and purposes; and we make this addition to the 
definition we have just accepted, because the 
right conduct of the mind, in deliberate think- 
ing, is the most important sphere of our moral 
responsibility and self-correction ; inasmuch as 
our outward deeds are born in our thoughts, and 
all our outward life is conditioned and regulated 
by and through the life within. 

And now we would have you notice that the 
definition we have quoted and adopted recog- 
nizes the fact that this grace is composed of two 
separate elements, which we may briefly state to 
be, a genuine sorrow for sin, and a sincere turn- 



84 BASAL TRUTHS. 



ing away from sin ; and these two distinctive 
features we now desire to examine more closely, 
that they may be more fully understood ; for a 
mistake in the first step is very apt to enter into 
all that follows, and may end in vitiating the 
whole result of our inquiries. 

In stating, as we have done, that repentance 
is the first step in the religious life, we mean, of 
course, that it is the first step which we take, 
the first action on our part ; as distinguished 
from the action of the Spirit of God upon our 
minds and hearts. 

Before a man can really be sorry for sin, he 
must recognize that he is a sinner. It is foolish 
in the extreme to imagine a man sorrowing over 
a wrong which he does not discern. So that 
repentance is, and must be, preceded by convic- 
tion ; but this is the work of the Holy Spirit, 
and we do not hesitate to assert that this work 
is so constantly and so faithfully performed by 
him, that there is not a person living, who 
has come to the years of maturity, but has 



REPENTANCE. 85 



been made conscious of the fact of wrongdoing, 
and has felt himself to be a sinner in the sight 
of God. That being so, sorrow for sin would 
seem to be the natural and legitimate outcome ; 
and this, we repeat, is the first step on our part 
in the upward path, which leads us back to our 
lost Eden, and to the friendship and favor of 
him whose laws we have broken, and whose 
claims we have ignored. 

All the great changes of life awaken feeling; 
and the feeling will be joyous or sorrowful ac- 
cording to the nature of the change. And such 
is the nature of sin, that its realization can 
scarcely fail to awaken in us a sense of grief and 
sadness. 

But we cannot too deeply impress upon our- 
selves the thought, that the sorrow of true re- 
pentance does not arise from the dread of the 
punishment which the sin committed may entail ; 
but from a deep sense of having grieved the 
kindest parent, and the greatest benefactor. To 
call to mind that he is a Being to whom per- 



86 BASAL TRUTHS. 



tains all that is vast in power, all that is com- 
prehensive in wisdom, all that is enchanting in 
goodness and mercy ; to gaze upon the whole 
galaxy of glories which blaze forth in his deal- 
ings with us ; to recognize that his " goodness 
and mercy have followed us all the days of our 
life ; " and then to be obliged to look him in the 
face and say, *' Against thee, thee only have I 
sinned ; " this it is which touches the place of 
tears, and melts the heart into contrition. 

The truly penitent man does not attempt to 
vindicate his position, or to palliate his guilt. 
He confesses his sins to God, and even to man, 
as far as may be necessary to restore the rights 
of others. His experience falls into line with 
that of the Psalmist, as he exclaims, first in 
regard to himself, '' I acknowledge my transgres- 
sions, and my sin is ever before me ; " and then, 
in regard to God, *' I acknowledge my sin unto 
thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, 
I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, 
and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." 



REPENTANCE. 



87 



This godly sorrow first deepens into a holy 
shame, and then grows into a profound abhor- 
rence of e\al, and then we come to feel that it 
must be driven from the life at whatever cost of 
sacrifice and suff"ering the process may entail ; 
and at this point the second and most important 
feature of repentance comes clearly into view; 
and that second element is Reformation. 

In the awakening of these feelings of sorrow, 
shame, and abhorrence, the work of repentance 
is but half done; and it is in the remaining half, 
in the reformatory portion of the process, that 
the difficulty of repenting really lies. And the 
reason for this centres in the fact that the affec- 
tions have become perverted ; they have lost 
their purity and tone ; and our moral powers 
have become gross and deformed, under the 
stupefying influences which sin has brought to 
bear upon them. 

But, notwithstanding this, w^e strongly insist 
that the work is not completed until the '' after- 
view" has led to ''after-action; " that we have 



88 BASAL TRUTHS. 



not really repented until we have turned reso- 
lutely away from the sins we have been led to 
mourn. 

We therefore proceed to say that repentance 
includes an entire change of front. It implies a 
change of the standard by which we estimate all 
values. It demands a change in the direction 
of our thinking, and in all the governing ideas 
and purposes of our career. It calls for a com- 
plete turning about ; a change from the ways of 
error to those of truth, from a career of sin to 
a life of holiness ; the removal of the life from 
beneath the government of self, and a complete 
surrender and submission to the rule and au- 
thority of God. It is a change in the affections, 
and in the principles of action; a change so 
radical and thorough as to reverse the entire 
order of our being. 

To emphasize this thought still further, and 
to put it on a more practical basis than com- 
mon, we would say, in the words of Scripture, 
that those who thus really turn to God will 



REPENTANCE. 89 



evidence the fact by " bringing forth works meet 
for repentance." The profane will learn to rev- 
erence God's name, and to worship him in spirit 
and in truth. The man who has loved the 
world with an inordinate affection will learn to 
set his heart on heavenly things. The proud 
man will become humble ; the unfeeling man 
will grow sympathetic and charitable ; the con- 
tentious man will cultivate a spirit of meekness ; 
and even the most beloved forms of sin will be 
forsaken ; and, in this manner, the repentance 
of which we make profession will prove itself to 
be sincere. 

This leads us to say that repentance is both a 
distinct and solemn act, and a lifelong and per- 
vading spirit. A Christian life should be, from 
first to last, a life of amendment, as well as of 
aspiration. There is constant need for rectifi- 
cation of the wrong in us, as well as for the 
cultivation and improvement of the right. 

Have you ever noted that in the parable of 
the Prodigal Son our Lord has given us a com- 



90 BASAL TRUTHS. 



plete and wonderful picture of the nature and 
outcome of this grace, both on its divine and 
on its human side? The son in the parable 
assumed independence of his father, and spent 
his substance in riotous living. As the result 
of this course, he came to actual want, and sub- 
mitted to the hardest and basest forms of labor, 
that he might procure for himself the coarsest 
forms of food. Then, when touched by the 
power of '* afterview," he had resolved in deep 
humility to return to the home from which he 
had departed of his own free will, his language 
is worthy of our closest attention. *^ I will arise, 
and go to my father, and will say unto him, 
Father, I have sinned against heaven, and 
before thee ; and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son : make me as one of thy hired 
servants." 

The application of all this to our present 
theme is extremely simple. Every wicked man 
assumes that he is independent of God. He 
makes his own will the rule of his conduct, instead 



REPENTANCE. 



91 



of submitting himself to the will of God : and this 
course of conduct never fails to bring, sooner or 
later, its burden of suffering. If the suffering 
comes in the present life, and brings us *' to our 
mind ; " then the suffering is but a blessing in 
disguise. If it leads us back in penitence to 
God, then the human side of the work is made 
complete. 

And what of the diviner side? May we not 
go forward and say that the way in which the 
father received the prodigal in the parable, 
exactly represents the w^ay in which our 
Heavenly Father receives every true penitent 
that returns to Him? He observes his very 
first attempts at home-coming ; and he has com- 
passion upon him. He bestows upon him his 
greatest blessings; pardons his sins; receives 
him again into the family; imparts to him the 
graces necessary for his future development as a 
member of the divine household ; clothes him 
with the garments of righteousness and peace ; 
and reinstates him in all the honors he had lost. 



92 BASAL TRUTHS. 



We may therefore sum up the nature of re- 
pentance as follows. It is more than thought, 
more than emotion, more than tearful sorrow 
over our recognized sinfulness. Added to this 
it includes a sincere and hearty turning away 
from sin. It begins in the humiliation of the 
heart, and ends in the reformation of the life ; 
for, to quote the quaint but expressive language 
of John Dilwyn, who wrote nearly two centuries 
ago, " Repentance without reformation is like 
continual pumping in a ship, without stopping 
the leaks by which the water enters." 

The principles of a heavenly life are the 
supreme love of God, and the equal love of our 
neighbors with ourselves ; and as our repentance 
brings us nearer to this standard it is real and 
true ; as it fails of this, it is worthless and 
false. 

Having thus considered the nature of this 
grace, we turn now to a brief study of its 
necessity. 

It does not seem that there should be any 



IlEPENTANCE. 93 



difficulty on the part of any thoughtful person, 
in reahzing the necessity of repentance for sin. 
Man, in his sinful state, and God, in his absolute 
holiness, are widely dissevered. This separa- 
tion is fatal both to man's future happiness, and 
to his present peace. There is no expectation, 
nor even possibility of change in God ; and this 
truth, as revealed to us in our own moral con- 
sciousness, as well as in his written word, is as 
eternal and immutable as he is himself. It 
follows, therefore, that if God and man are to be 
brought together, there must be, on our part, 
just such a change as we have endeavored to 
describe. 

Without repentance, the sinner still continues 
to be a sinner; and, as such, he is the enemy of 
holiness and God. His guilt and pollution are 
naked and open. to God's all-seeing eye. And 
when we look at the holiness of God in its 
aspect of irreconcilable hostility to all iniquity; 
when we remember that into the inner sanctuary 
of his presence can come nothing that defileth ; 



94 BASAL TRUTHS. 



when we find it recorded that while he is a God 
of mercy, yet '' he will by no means clear the 
guilty;" the necessity of repentance blazes 
before us with a light so clear and strong, that 
there need be, and indeed can be, no mistake in 
this regard. 

Turning from the character of God to that 
of man, we feel within ourselves that character 
will decide the allotments of eternity. In such 
views of heaven as have been vouchsafed to us, 
it stands revealed as the abode of purity and 
truth. The foundation of its sublime happiness 
is its holiness. Every being, every affection, 
every enjoyment and pursuit, is pure, and ele- 
vated, and clean. With such society the im- 
penitent man has absolutely nothing in common. 
Such affections he cannot exercise. Such pur- 
suits he could not follow. In such enjoyments 
he could not participate. Could he be per- 
mitted to look into the face of God, the sight 
would but overwhelm him in an agony of con- 
scious guilt. With his heart opposed to the 



REPENTANCE. 95 



divine law, the very fulfilment of its high com- 
mands would make the life of heaven itself a 
painful and eternal drudgery. Unless he be 
transformed in his mind and spirit, and his 
nature brought into harmony with the nature of 
God, heaven would be to him a veritable hell, 
even if he could be admitted within its golden 
portals ; for 

" The mind is its own place ; and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 

The gospel lays before us but one alternative. 
Its solemn declaration is, ''Repent or perish." 
The line of the coming judgment is to be run 
directly through the question we are now con- 
sidering ; and on a matter so momentous we 
cannot afford to leave ourselves in doubt. 

But God has light for all dark lives; forgive- 
ness for all who turn in ^'ncerity of heart to 
him ; strength for the weak ; and life for all who 
are dead in trespasses and sins. Repent, and 
you will receive forgiveness ; and with it, a new 



96 BASAL TRUTHS. 



heart, and a new life ; and hopes for the future 
which will destroy all fears concerning the 
past, and make the present to glow with a 
gladness which will grow and heighten into 
heaven's eternal blessedness and rest. 

You are called, in the exercise of this grace, 
to leave behind you only those things which 
are weights and burdens; only the fetters which 
have bound you to the sensual and the low. 
You are called to go forward into a life so 
elevated and divine, so beautifully pure, so 
exquisitely joyous, that, could you but realize 
it as it is, there could be no hesitation concern- 
ing its acceptance by any man among you. 

It is a life in which the soul, winged with holy 
aspirations, and crowned with elevating desires, 
shall sweep onward through the limitless cycles 
of eternity, with an ever-increasing sense of 
blessedness and peace ; gathering to itself new 
glories with every new experience ; taking on 
more and more of the divine image with every 
new manifestation of his love; until that likeness 



REPENTANCE. 



97 



shall at length be completely re-established ; 
and the heaven within you, and the heaven 
about you, shall be as one. 

In the path which leads to all these blessed 
experiences, repentance is the first step. There 
is no longer any reason that we should put the 
question, Why should this step be taken? but 
we may ask in conclusion, When should this 
step be taken? 

Not only the commands of God, but all his 
warnings and threatenings, all his invitations 
and entreaties, unite with his providential dis- 
pensations, in the endeavor to stop the sinner 
in his iniquity, and to bring him to an immedi- 
ate submission to the terms and requirements 
of the gospel. 

He discloses the awful condition of the im- 
penitent and the faithless, in the declaration, 
'^ He that believeth not is condemned already.*' 
In his providences he plants the path of sin with 
thorns, and thus proves the truth of the state- 
ment that '' there is no peace to the wicked." 

7 



98 BASAL TRUTHS. 



He reminds us of the shortness and uncertainty 
of our probationary state, by asserting, '' Ye 
know not what shall be on the morrow ; " for, 
'* What is your life? It is even as a vapor, that 
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
away." He admonishes us of the danger of 
repeatedly slighting his appeals, in the solemn 
declaration, ^* He that, being often reproved, 
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, 
and that without remedy." And with all the 
earnestness of entreaty at his command, he 
adds, '' To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden 
not your hearts. Behold, iiow is the accepted 
time ; behold now is the day of salvation." 

On this point, God has written to us with his 
own hand, and there is nothing left for us to 
say, save to exhort you to heed his warning, 
accept his invitation ; and, just now, repenting 
of your sin, and turning from every evil way, 
cast yourselves at once upon his mercy, and 
find in his abounding grace your heaven of 
peace and rest. 



V. 

FAITH. 



" Faith is the key which opens the door, and 
admits us into the presence-chamber of the King 
of Glory." — Naogorgeus. 



V. 



FAITH. 



Now faith is the substance of things hoped for^ 
the evidence of things not seen} 

Faith is one of the broadest and most com- 
prehensive principles of which we have any 
knowledge. It touches human life at more 
points, and influences it in more directions, 
than any other force with which, as yet, we 
have been made acquainted. It is among the 
most powerful of the factors which are at 
work for the development of the race; it is 
the source of a much larger measure of our 
happiness than we are apt to discern ; and it 
forms a kind of mainspring in the thousand- 

1 Hebrews xi. i. 



I02 BASAL TRUTHS. 

fold activities which make up the sum-total 
of human living. 

It enters into nearly every phase of human 
thought, and weaves itself into the very tissue 
of human character. It builds its home near 
to the heart of our business interests; it holds 
together the social fabric in oneness, and in 
strength; and moves, with a majestic freedom, 
through the whole realm of human affairs. 

Lord Lytton has said, in one of those great 
speeches which have made him famous ; '' Strike 
from mankind the principle of faith, and men 
would have no more history than a flock of 
sheep.'' And Dr. Guthrie has left behind him 
this statement; "Remove faith between man 
and man, and society and commerce fall to 
pieces. There is not a happy home on earth 
but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed 
on it; we sleep at night in its arms with 
greater security for the safety of our lives, 
peace, and property, than bolts and bars can 
give." 



FAITH. 103 

Thinking more deeply into this material side 
of our subject, we readily discern that the first 
principles of any science are not the results of 
study, but are taken on faith as necessarily true ; 
and it is by the use of these first principles which 
reason furnishes, and faith accepts, that we press 
forward to the development of the science, and 
to the application of its results. Nor can we 
learn the processes of any ordinary trade, or 
the details of any ordinary business, without 
exercising faith in the superior wisdom of our 
instructors, and in the statements they make 
for our guidance and direction. It is by faith 
that poetry, as well as piety, rises above the 
level of the things about us ; and it is by this 
same power that imagination breaks through 
the clouds which hang in our sky, and breathes 
a purer air, lives in a softer light, and drinks the 
sweet nectar of a satisfaction, which is alike 
impossible to the unimaginative and the unbe- 
lieving mind. 

So that on what we are accustomed to call 



I04 BASAL TRUTHS. 

life's lower levels, faith is at once a necessity, 
and a source of development and strength. 
For example : Faith in the laws of Nature 
leads the farmer to yoke his oxen to the 
plough, and break up the hard surface of 
the soil, and cast his seed into the furrows ; 
and to do this at a season of the year when 
there are no bursting buds upon the trees 
which bound his field ; when no birds are sing- 
ing in the lifeless forests ; but when Nature 
herself seems cold and dead. 

In like manner the sailor leaves his native 
land behind him, and as its last blue hill dips 
into the silent and trackless sea, his faith sees, 
rising above the prow of his swift ship, the 
shores of a land which will not be visible to 
the eye of sense for many a day to come. So 
that we feel justified in saying, yet once again, 
that faith is the backbone of our social system, 
the bed-rock of our commercial system, and an 
absolute necessity for our advancement in all 
the departments of knowledge, and in all the 
interests of Hfe. 



FAITH. 



105 



As we endeavor to rise higher, and to con- 
nect this same powerful factor with the interests 
of our spiritual nature, we find that scarcely any 
truth is more frequently or more forcefully stated 
in the Scriptures, than that faith is a funda- 
mental principle of our holy religion. Every one 
of the Old Testament books, from Genesis to 
Malachi, presents it to the view, and emphasizes 
it as absolutely necessary to the knowledge and 
practice of godliness. Its forces run parallel 
to those of repentance, and its claims upon our 
attention are fully equal in importance and in 
urgency. 

This line of teaching, which is in a sense the 
centre of the Old Testament, may also be said 
to be the glory of the New. The four Gospels 
reveal its nature and its value, as exhibited in 
the life and teachings of the Christ. The Acts 
of the Apostles may be said to be a series 
of living illustrations of its worth and power. 
John interweaves it into the very tissue of his 
great doctrine of love. James, while strenu- 



I06 BASAL TRUTHS. 



ously contending for an outward life of prac- 
tical righteousness, admits that faith is the 
instrumental cause of moral rectitude. And 
the necessity of faith is the deep and resonant 
undertone of the Pauline theology from first 
to last. 

Faith is many-sided ; and so presents itself 
to the view in many aspects; but, see it as 
we may, it everywhere forces upon us the 
conclusion that it is a necessity of our nature ; 
a something which we cannot possibly dispense 
with. Its absence creates within us a lack 
which nothing else can make good ; a felt need 
which no other gift is able to supply. 

To such an extent is this true, that the world 
furnishes no more forlorn sight, no greater ob- 
ject of human pity, than a man in whom the 
principle of faith is motionless and dead. All 
the conditions of human life and progress de- 
mand it ; whether we regard life upon its 
earthly or its heavenly side. It is the golden 
chain which binds man to his fellow-man; and 



FAITH. 



107 



it is the unseen magnet which holds the soul 
in fellowship with God. If the links of this 
chain be broken, if the forces of this magnet 
be dispersed, then man falls at once into a 
great deep of disquietude and dissatisfaction, 
and the charm and beauty of his life is gone. 
But a true faith reveals to the soul possessing 
it, a divine and ever-present Helper, in whom 
all its necessities are fully met. 

It may be thought by some, that faith is such 
an intangible and mysterious thing, that it can- 
not thus control the life-issues of a creature 
such as man. But the very elements of mys- 
tery and intangibility are, in part, the sources 
of its power ; because these correspond with 
like elements in ourselves, in a manner which, 
to material things, is utterly impossible. 

By this we mean that when we have made 
ourselves masters of the principles of knowl- 
edge; when w^e have learned to follow the 
intricate windings of philosophy, until the clew 
to its maze lies within our grasp ; when we have 



I08 BASAL TRUTHS. 

grounded ourselves in the various branches of 
science, and their deductions stand plainly open 
to the view ; we have not succeeded in reaching 
a state of satisfaction, we are still far from feel- 
ing that all our needs have been fully met. 

Even if the life be bright w^ith hope, or 
flooded with the radiance of love, or calmed 
by the soft zephyrs of patience, or enriched 
with the warm glow of charity, or clothed in 
the resplendent robes of meekness ; yet we 
realize the need of a something more. Beau- 
tiful and elevating as these may be, they do 
not cover and represent all the elements of 
which we are composed ; and a few days of 
darkness and conflict will usually suffice to 
drive us out in search of the warmer and 
brighter realm of trust, just as the birds mi- 
grate in the springtime to the region of groves 
and flowers they know and love so well. 

Until faith has made real to us the presence 
and power of God in outer things, the material 
universe will appear to us less as a friend than 



FAITH. 



109 



as a foe. What we call the order of Nature, 
when viewed apart from God, is a stern and 
relentless thing; moving onward with an un- 
bending rigidity from which we naturally shrink. 
It is devoid of all those marks of sympathy for 
which the human eye must look, and for which 
the human heart will long. And even as we 
strive to rise to the study of religion we are 
helpless without faith ; for it is to this principle 
that religion directly addresses itself. If we 
turn to the written word for help, we have 
only grasped the remaining horn of the same 
dilemma; for faith is the only channel through 
which we can come to the realization of the 
fact, that the written word is the real word of 
God. 

Before offering any formal definition of faith, 
we must first strive to distinguish between faith 
and mere belief; for the failure to make this 
distinction clear and sharp has been a very 
fruitful source of error in the past, and is a 
source of error still. 



no BASAL TRUTHS. 

Belief accepts a creed ; faith takes direct hold 
of God. Belief is a work of the intellect; faith 
is a work of the heart. Belief is largely a 
matter of human invention ; faith is a divine 
principle, or gift. Human beliefs miay be, and 
frequently are, radically false; while the faith 
which comes from God is grounded in the 
truth of his own nature, as well as in the truth 
he has revealed. A false and erroneous belief 
may be held with the utmost sincerity; but, 
even then, it fails to produce the results which 
spring from a genuine faith. 

This opens the way for an attempt at the 
correction of an error which is by far too 
common among us. We sometimes hear it 
said that it does not matter what a man be- 
lieves if he is but sincere; but we again con- 
tend that, in addition to the measure of our 
sincerity, we must take into account the meas- 
ure of our light. 

'' The Hindoo still immolates himself upon 
the altar of his idol, and the ^Mussulman still 



FAITH. 1 1 1 

makes his pilgrimage to Mecca, and the monk 
still withdraws himself from human society, 
and the anchorite from human sympathy ; and 
all do these things in response to the require- 
ments of their several religious beliefs." But 
surely there is, there must be, a vast difference 
between these blind and superstitious beliefs 
and the simpler and diviner faith of the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ ; and this difference is plainly 
evidenced in the different nature of the fruit- 
age which results from the latter, as compared 
with the products of the former. 

What then is this great moral power, this 
spiritual force, as we often call it ; and wherein 
does its efficacy lie? What is the philosophy 
of its action, and the secret of its strength? 

We might easily fill up the remaining space 
at our disposal by simply presenting selections 
from the long list of theological definitions of 
faith, which have grown with the growth of 
the ages, until they now form a voluminous 
literature in themselves. But such a course 



112 BASAL TRUTHS. 

would only end in confusing us yet the more ; 
and whatever specific definition we might see 
fit to emphasize, would be disregarded, if not 
rejected, by those whose theological opinions 
diff*ered from our own. 

To such an extent is this true, that any 
attempt to settle the question in this w^ay is 
worse than hopeless ; and hence we turn from 
the world of theological discussion, to the 
world of actual life; and, as we do so, we are 
impressed with the thought that it would be 
extremely difficult to frame a definition more 
clear and forceful than that which is furnished 
in our text: "Now faith is the substance of 
things hoped for; the evidence of things not 
seen." 

These words supply a twofold answer to the 
question now before us; and in so doing, they 
bring out very clearly the two elements of which 
a true faith is composed. They teach us, in the 
first place, that faith is the principle which gives 
body and reality to our loftiest hopes; and, in 



FAITH. 113 

the second place, that it reveals to us the things 
which are otherwise unseen. But these two 
thoughts are so nearly one, that^ for the present, 
we may study them together. 

A human life which does not reach out 
beyond the things we see about us, is narrow 
and restricted in the extreme. A life devoid 
of hope is but a second-rate existence at best. 
Faith is the laying hold of the future in the 
midst of the present; the realization of the 
unseen in the midst of the seen. A life of 
faith is heaven anticipated ; and heaven is the 
realization of the things revealed by a life of 
faith. 

It is in its power to lift us out of the realm 
of the material, that the value and importance 
of this gift becomes apparent. Define it as 
we will, we do not see its heart, nor reach 
and catch its real significance, until this pri- 
mary truth comes clearly into view. The full 
tide of life does not flow through the channels 
of the material; for there is a spirit-life in man, 

8 



114 BASAL TRUTHS. 



with distinctive tendencies of its own. The 
soul must eat of the heavenly manna, just as 
the body must eat of the earthly bread. 

If God is spirit, then man needs to be spirit- 
ualized, before any communion can be estab- 
lished between the two which shall be perfect 
and complete. If the plane of God's life is far 
above that in which our life is felt to move, then 
we should seek by a lofty effort to soar upward 
and plant ourselves amid the splendors which 
shine out from the glory in which the Godhead 
is enrobed. And, again, we assert that all this 
is impossible until we come into possession of a 
power which can bring the soul forth from the 
dominion of earthly appetites, render it superior 
to the demands of earthly desire, and fill it to 
overflowing with the forces which touch us from 
that higher plane on which God moves; and 
such a power is faith. 

It will therefore be seen that the sphere of 
faith is much wider than that of the reason. 
Not that these two factors are in any way an- 



FAITH. 



IIS 



tagonistic to each other; but faith takes up the 
story of our being at the point where reason 
leaves it, and carries it forward to a consum- 
mation such as reason cannot comprehend. 

Reason but leads us to the margin of life's 
ocean, while faith launches her bark upon its 
broad and bounding waters, and sails outward, 
that it may discover its profoundest secrets, and 
secure a home upon its happiest shore. As 
Cowper has expressed it, — 

" And is this all ? Can reason do no more 
Than bid me shun the deep, and dread the shore ? 
Sweet moralist! afloat on life's rough sea, 
The Christian has an art unknown to thee. 
He holds no parley with unmanly fears, 
Where duty calls he confidently steers ; 
Faces a thousand dangers at her call, 
And, trusting in his God, surmounts them all." 

Looking at faith more strictly from the reli- 
gious viewpoint, its philosophy may be stated 
with equal simplicity. We have only to go 
back over the ground we have already trav- 
ersed, w^ith this thought in mind, and much 



Il6 BASAL TRUTHS. 

of the so-called mystery of faith will stand 
open to the view. 

God is the Creator of man, and therefore 
possesses in himself a sovereign right to issue 
such laws as may seem best for man's govern- 
ment and direction. The law under which God 
has placed man is strictly in harmony with his 
noblest attributes, and with his highest inter- 
ests ; by which we mean to say, that the de- 
mands of the divine law are such as reason 
perceives to be just; and such as, if obeyed, 
are adapted to promote both our intellectual 
health, and our spiritual vigor. So that, even 
under the dominion of reason, man has no 
excuse for sin. 

We have also seen that sin has done its 
deadliest work in separating man and his 
Maker; and that reason owns herself power- 
less to bridge the chasm which sin has made. 
But faith is a creature with wings ; and in her 
strong and broad-spreading pinions man finds 
his only means of escape. She carries him 



FAITH. 117 

back into the presence of the God from 
whom he has departed ; and while repentance 
acknowledges the sins committed, faith takes 
hold on Christ with a clinging and unfalter- 
ing trust, and pleads expectantly for pardon 
and for peace. 

It follows, therefore, that this grace is as 
closely related to the future as to the present. 
Death does not destroy us. It catches, crystal- 
lizes, and makes permanent, the character which 
life has formed. Faith marches triumphantly 
forward into that which lies beyond death's 
mystic portal ; and, in the case of the good 
man, opens up glimpses of the glorious day- 
break of the coming eternity; and holds out 
for his encouragement and assurance, bright 
visions of what the spirit may there attain to. 

In moments of temptation and trial, when the 
battle of purity against sin, of hope against 
despair, rages with terrific fierceness ; it ever 
whispers that a strong though unseen Helper 
stands close beside us ; that he whose compas- 



Il8 BASAL TRUTHS. 

sion never fails, whose goodness never falters, 
is nearest to us when our need is greatest; and 
that, in his strength, we may vanquish every 
besetment, triumph over every evil, and press 
onward into the possession of the celestial 
and the immortal; making our home in his 
presence, where there is fulness of joy, and 
resting ourselves at his right hand, w^here 
there are pleasures for evermore. These are 
the things we hope for, and faith gives them 
body and form. These things we do not see 
as yet ; but faith is the evidence of their reality 
and truth. 

It is now in order to put to ourselves the 
following simple questions. Have we such a 
faith in the things of God as makes them to 
be the most powerful sources of our hope 
and comfort? Does the breath of despair 
sweep over the spirit when they are thrust 
aside, and the world gains the ascendancy? 
Does the light of life come back to us as 
faith again rises above the horizon-line, and, 



FAITH. 



119 



star-like, sheds its radiance upon our path? 
Do we so beheve in the fatherhood and im- 
manence of God, that our behef changes our 
hfe, and we carry with us into every incident 
of our career, a new sense of destiny, a new 
disgust of sin, a new pity for the unbeheving, 
and a new determination to seek their good? 

It is in the answers we feel compelled to 
give to questions such as these, rather than 
in the mere acceptance of a formal creed, 
that we are to discover to ourselves our true 
condition in regard to things divine. A faith 
such as we have been describing cannot fail 
to be discerned by all who really possess it. 
Grounded as it is in reason, having its seat 
in the mind, as well as in the heart, it will 
lift our religious experience out of the realm 
of doubt, and will place it in the clear sun- 
light of intelligent and undying conviction. 

And one of the earliest evidences of the 
possession of this great gift will be the quick- 
ening of our interest in others. We are never 



120 BASAL TRUTHS. 



very earnest in the pursuit of that in which we 
have but httle faith. Nor are we ever able to 
do our best w^ork for others, until we are filled 
with a sense of our own personal connection 
with him to whom we fain would lead them. 
In proportion as the Christian hope burns 
brightly in our own souls, will our Christian 
work be of a hopeful character. '' According 
to our faith shall it be to us," in this particular, 
as in all else connected with the life divine. 

The cause of the Lord drags but slowly 
onward, by reason of the feebleness of this 
grace in those w^ho are its representatives be- 
fore an ungodly world. The light of life shines 
but dimly in any soul, when the candle of its faith 
burns low. And the salvation and regeneration 
of the race lag terribly, because of the absence 
of that brilliant glow in us, w^hich should illumi- 
nate the path over which the sinful must come 
back to God and peace. 

"As children go to school because, in addi- 
tion to their faith in their teacher, they have 



FAITH. 121 



faith in the value of his instructions to fit them 
for a useful manhood ; so should we exercise 
faith in Christ and his teachings, not merely 
for the sake of the personal comfort arising 
from our personal trust; but we should strive 
to recognize the power which faith possesses 
to make us wise and successful workers in 
the varied fields of usefulness which religion 
opens before our aspiring souls." 

A true faith is not, and never can be, selfish. 
It is a breath from the unceasing activities of 
God. It ennobles every service, however trivial, 
by making us ^' workers together with him.'* 
The humblest duty and the lowliest endeavors 
become supremely beautiful when illumined 
with the divine presence, and tinged with the 
glowing colors of his love. 

'' The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, 

Whose deeds, both great and small, 
Are close-knit strands of an unbroken thread, 

Where love ennobles all ; 
The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells, 
The Book of Life the shinino^ record tells." 



122 BASAL TRUTHS. 



Faith and Love are twin sisters. They labor 
side by side, they journey onward hand in hand. 
Faith grasps the immaterial, and love hides it 
in its heart. Faith makes real to us the hopes 
which buoy up the soul of the worker, and love 
converts them into actions, and weaves them 
into every form of Christian toil. Under the 
influence of a pure and holy faith, the drudgery 
of Christian effort disappears, and the soul 
triumphs amid difficulties which could not 
otherwise be overcome. And when, to the 
Church as a whole, faith becomes ''the sub- 
stance of things hoped for, and the evidence 
of things not seen,'* the wails of defeat shall 
be lost in the anthems of our triumph, and the 
whole world be laid as a votive offering at the 
Master's feet. 



VI. 
REGENERATION. 



"What phraseology was more familiar with the 
infidel revolutionists of France than the regeneration 
of their country? And is the idea of a regenerated 
individual an extravagant one to be sneered at, when 
that of a regenerated nation is to be treated with re- 
spect? Yea, infidel speculators will discourse of a 
regenerated world, and yet make sport to themselves 
with our faith, as if it were fantastic and visionary, 
when we speak of the regeneration of a single man ! 
How is it that, being such masters in philosophy and 
politics, they know not these things? " 

W, Anderson, LL,D, 



VI. 
REGENERATION, 

Except a fnan be born agaitiy he cannot see the 
khigdoin of God} 

In repentance and faith we have been con- 
sidering tv^o of the processes of the Christian 
life v^hich are largely to be wrought out by our- 
selves. We say largely to be wrought out by 
ourselves, and not zvholly so, as some would have 
us to believe. If we have failed to show that 
there is a divine element in each of these graces, 
we have certainly come short of our intention, 
and have missed one of the chiefest points at 
which we aimed. 

He who is most sincere in his repentance will 
most readily admit that its processes are God- 
1 John iii. 3. 



126 BASAL* TRUTHS 



born. The man who possesses the largest meas- 
ure of faith recognizes most clearly that '* faith is 
the gift of God." Each of these graces has both 
a divine and a human side ; a work to be wrought 
in us by God ; and a work to be wrought by 
ourselves. God convicts us of our sinfulness, 
and we become sorry for our wrong, and turn 
to the doing of his will. God reveals himself to 
us as God ; and we believe upon his name, and 
place our interests in his care. 

But the work of regeneration is a divine work 
from first to last. We may do much in the way 
of preparing ourselves for its reception ; or we 
may so block the avenues of our life as to pre- 
vent its accomplishment; but the actual change 
which this word regeneration represents, must 
be, and can only be, accomplished by and 
through the direct and definite action of the 
Spirit of the living God. 

The facts in the case may be briefly stated 
thus. Our com.mon Christianity, and our com- 
mon observation, find man everywhere laboring 



REGENERATION. 127 



under a burden of conscious guilt, and seeking, 
by methods too multitudinous to be enumer- 
ated, for the removal of that burden, and the 
renewal of his lost peace. His nature is de- 
graded, his passions are off their poise, the flame 
of heavenly affection no longer burns within his 
breast, and the strange fires of envy and hatred 
are enkindled in their stead. Even his mind 
is dark and uninformed ; he is ignorant of the 
nature and character of God, and of the laws by 
which human conduct should be regulated, and 
of those lofty hopes of the future grandeur and 
felicity of our being, which it was reserved for 
the Son of God, first to establish, and then to 
foster within our breasts. It will therefore 
be seen that there is no tendency in the unre- 
generate heart towards its own renewal ; nor 
are the powers of the mind in proper condi- 
tion for carrying such a work to a successful 
consummation. 

Man knows that he is depraved, and realizes 
that he is devoid of such power as is necessary 



128 BASAL TRUTHS. 

to restore him to the favor and image of God. 
It is therefore of the greatest importance that 
we should rightly grasp the meaning of our 
text; for its mission would seem to be to con- 
vev to man the knowledgre of the fact, that the 
hand which framed him at the first now offers 
to re-create him after the original pattern. 

In our study of this subject, it would be ex- 
tremely interesting to take up and consider the 
story of Xicodemus, and his night-visit to the 
Master ; and to dwell upon those conditions of 
Jewish life and history w^hich are reflected in 
the surroundings of that event. But, for the 
sake of the fuller exposition of the doctrine 
of regeneration itself, we must reluctantly deny 
ourselves this pleasure, and only refer to that 
outward environment in which the text is found, 
in so far as ma}' be necessary for its clearer 
elucidation. 

The new birth is a stupendous mystery. It 
can be known only by being experienced; and 
even when it is experienced, its story is by no 
means an eas\' one to tell. 



REGENERATION. 



129 



If pressed for a formal definition of regenera- 
tion, we would again turn from the statements 
usually found in our current works of theology, 
by reason of their cumbersome and complicated 
character; and would say, more simply, that 
regeneration is the reprinting of God's image 
on the soul ; the setting forth of our nature in a 
second and fairer edition. And if pressed for 
proof of the necessity of such a work, we would 
first refer to these words of Jesus, and then add, 
that so long as man is man, and God is God, so 
long must religion continue to work this mir- 
acle of grace, if man is to be reinstated in the 
divine favor, and know again the sweetness of 
the peace which he has lost. 

What then are we to understand to be the 
nature of the change referred to? for this is 
really the crucial problem of our present theme. 

When Jesus speaks of a second birth, he evi- 
dently refers to something in the spiritual life 
analogous to the first or physical birth. As by 
the first birth the living child is introduced into 

9 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



the natural world, in order tliat it may attain in 
due course to the perfection of manhood ; so, by 
the second birth, the new creature is introduced 
into the world of faith, there to be trained and 
nurtured, under fitting influences^ to the per- 
fection of manhood in Jesus Christ. 

To pursue the analogy still further. A new- 
born infant is a new creature, brought into the 
world by an almighty power, endued with life, 
and endowed with certain capacities and pro- 
pensities peculiarly its own. It is a hinnaii 
being, and possesses all the elements pertaining 
to human nature, though but in a weak and 
incipient state. But by proper care and suste- 
nance, this puerile creature may be developed 
and brought to the perfection of manhood, as 
we have just said. 

In like manner, the divine power produces in 
the mind oi the sinner, such a change as renders 
him a new creature, with new capacities and 
propensities of a spiritual sort. But these are 
also weak and feeble, exposed to adverse influ- 



REGENERATION. I3I 

ences, and needing sustenance and care. For 
this '' new-born babe," provision is made in '' the 
sincere milk of the word," and in the saving 
graces which our Lord has promised to bestow, 
by and through the Holy Ghost; and, thus 
nurtured, growth leads onward to maturity. 

As we understand this matter, no n^w faadties 
are communicated in this change; but a new 
and heavenly direction is given to all those 
faculties which the Creator had bestowed upon 
us in the beginning, but which sin had per- 
verted and turned aside from their proper use 
and end. 

In his first birth, man received the capacity 
to understand, and believe, and love, and re- 
joice in the things which make their appeals to 
him from the world without. But in the new 
birth, the direction of the life is so changed, 
that the understanding of the heavenly and the 
divine becomes possible as it had never been 
before. As the regenerating power completes 
its work in him, he finds himself capable of 



132 BASAL TRUTHS. 

believing in the spiritual ; of loving the pure 
beauties of the character of God; and of rejoi- 
cing, not only in the manifestations of his favor, 
but even in the doing of his will. As man gen- 
erates man; as nature begets nature; so the 
Holy Spirit produces holy inclinations and dis- 
positions, holy qualifications and powers, and 
gives a heavenly bent and trend to all the gifts 
which we possess. 

Among the New Testament writers, Saint John 
may be said to be the especial exponent of this 
doctrine ; but instead of descending to the lower 
levels of formal definition, his thought moves 
on a loftier plane and reveals the nature of 
regeneration in its results. 

This truth may be most clearly presented by 
quoting a few passages selected from the many, 
by way of illustration. '' Whosoever is born of 
God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth 
in him." '' In this, the children of God are mani- 
fest, and the children of the devil : whosoever 
doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither 



REGENERATION. 1 33 

he that loveth not his brother." '' Ye know that 
every one that doeth righteousness is born of 
him." " Every one that loveth is born of God, 
and knoweth God." '' We know that whosoever 
is born of God sinneth not." 

In the Hght of these, and kindred passages 
from his writings, we are led to see that to 
John's mind, regeneration was a change from 
sin to holiness ; a death to the life of sin, and a 
birth to that of purity and truth ; and in every 
case, this change is directly attributed to the 
influence of that higher power which comes 
into view in the w^ords of our Lord to Nico- 
demus, ''Ye must be born from above;" for 
such is their literal interpretation, and the 
meaning they are intended to convey. 

But little thought is needed to convince us 
that nothing short of divine power could possi- 
bly accomplish so great a work in man. Moral- 
ity, without the purifying influences of the gos- 
pel, is utterly inadequate to such a task. It may 
indeed restrain us from the commission of out- 



134 BASAL TRUTHS. 



wardly notorious crimes, while the disposition 
to sin continues still unchanged. Such effects 
as it may produce are but transient at the 
best. They are but as the receding waves, 
repulsed and broken for a moment on the 
shore, while the great tide is still rolling in, and 
gaining strength with the sweep of every foam- 
ing breaker. 

Such lowliness of mind as the New Testament 
writers depict as characteristic of him who has 
been born again, is not a flower that grows in 
the fields of nature ; but is planted by the hand 
of God in hearts renewed by his Spirit, and 
mellowed by his grace. 

The highest mental culture, or even the 
broadest knowledge of the truth, cannot work 
this change w^ithin us, or give us the satisfaction 
for which we long, or the sense of safety on 
which our peace must necessarily depend. It 
is only as we move in harmony with the mind 
and purposes of God, and, conscious of our own 
weaknesses and necessities, lay hold on his per- 



REGENERATION. 



135 



fections ; that we can stand erect in the day of 
battle, and, armed with God's presence and 
might, as with a triple shield of brass, challenge 
to the conflict the bitterest and most deadly of 
our foes. 

'' It is not enough that we be new dressed ; 
we must be new made." The whole moral and 
spiritual being must be created over again. The 
understanding must shine with God's light ; the 
will must be strengthened with God's power; 
the affections must be sanctified by the infusion 
of God's love ; the life must be reformed and 
renovated by the impartation of God's life. 

We may now sum up our remarks upon the 
7iature of this grace, as follows: Regeneration is 
God's impartation of himself to man. It is the 
breathing of his nature into ours. The life of 
heaven is blended with the life of earth. The 
power which moves the universe is harnessed to 
the chariots of mortal being. The love, which 
makes the anthems of the angels, flows in upon 
the heart of man. The purity which forms the 



136 BASAL TRUTHS. 

atmosphere of the celestial city, environs us in 
the Hfe we Hve below. And God himself, in all 
the clustering glories of his eternal kingship, 
becomes the ruler and sustainer of the regener- 
ated soul. 

No wonder that he, before whose omniscient 
eye the heavenly kingdom, in all its enravishing 
splendors, lay open and exposed ; and to whose 
all-penetrating knowledge the evil of man's heart 
was equally apparent, should give utterance to 
the profoundly solemn statement, *^ Except a 
man be born again," — begotten from above, — 
** he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

In thus endeavoring to display before you the 
nature of regeneration, we have practically de- 
termined its necessity also ; and yet we may 
add a few words more, in relation to this latter 
point. 

Beginning again on the lower levels of this 
thought, we may say that without the new and 
fuller life which is ushered in by regeneration, 
man can never rise to the enjoyment of a com- 



REGENERATION. 



137 



plete and perfect satisfaction; for no creature 
can be satisfied unless its capacities for enjoy- 
ment, and the sources of its pleasure, coincide. 
There can be no real happiness unless the life 
move in an environment that is at once perfectly 
congenial, and perfectly conditioned to the life 
itself. 

So far as we know anything about the matter, 
all the various orders of animals are satisfied 
and contented with their various modes of living, 
so long as they are unmolested, and their en- 
vironment furnishes the means for the supplying 
of their wants. But the moment you interfere 
with the original order of their being, suff'ering 
and discontent ensue. Break in upon God's 
plan at any point, or in any way, and the result 
cannot fail to be disastrous. A fish out oi 
water has become a synonym for dissatisfaction 
and unrest; and the only thing to do is to return 
it to its native element, or to witness the for- 
feiture of its life ; and the same law holds good 
in every division of the animal world. 



n8 BASAL TRUTHS. 



'0 



Rising to the realm of human Hfe, we find 
that different men have different tastes ; but 
none are truly content unless their personal 
inclinations are met, and their personal desires 
gratified. Nor even then is man's happiness 
complete, until all the demands of his being 
have been satisfied, and all the forces of his 
nature have found their corresponding good. 

But the moment you undertake the task of 
meeting and satisfying the demands of a human 
being, you discover that the unregenerate man 
is not in his true element. He is removed from 
the sphere he was originally intended to occupy. 
Something has interfered with the divine order 
of his being. He is a fish out of water; he is 
breathing an atmosphere foreign to his true 
constitution ; and the result is suffering and 
unrest. Nothing can really be done for the 
permanent amendment of his condition, until 
he has been restored to his native element; until 
he moves again in the sphere which he was ori- 
ginally intended to occupy. 



REGENERATION. 1 39 

It is as necessary that man live and move in 
God, as that the whale find its home in the 
waters of the briny deep. The breath of God is 
the soul's natural atmosphere. Admit that man 
is in any sense a spiritual being, and a spiritual 
environment becomes at once an absolute neces- 
sity. Man's spirit has wandered from the Divine 
Spirit, and the result has been spiritual death. 
As the spirit of m^an returns to fellowship and 
communion with the Divine Spirit, the result 
will be spiritual Hfe. And hence we come to 
see that our Lord is right beyond all ques- 
tion, when he says, '' Except a man be born 
from above, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God." 

The means and manner of this change cannot 
always be observed. We can see the bud for 
the coming spring on the tree from which the 
leaves are falling in the present autumn ; but 
the processes of development, though latent in 
the bud, we cannot find, however carefully and 
persistently we may search for them. But as 



I40 BASAL TRUTHS. 



the sunshine of that coming spring shall warm 
the air, and fill it again with those elements of 
life which during the winter season have been 
waating, the buds will swell and the leaves 
unfold and the forest will be clothed in beauty; 
and the fields will be radiant with their new 
wealth of flowers. God's hand will be in all these 
changes, but still unseen ; God's power will be 
back of all, though unperceived. 

So it is with this greater phenomenon which 
we call "a change of heart." So far as we 
know, it is the greatest and most radical change 
which a human being ever experiences. It 
comprehends a complete revolutionizing of the 
entire life. The whole nature is re-created ; 
the m.an is born over again. But how the actual 
work is done, is still as much of a mystery as it 
was to Xicodemus at the first. " The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound 
thereof, but cannot tell whence it com.eth nor 
whither it goeth ; and so is every one that is 
born of the Spirit." 



I 



REGENERATION. 1 4 1 



Men are born again, — born from above ; born 
into a world of purity, by a new generating 
influence, an inwardly working power, which 
comes with all the might and force of the wind ; 
which no human eye can see ; but which lifts 
up the lowliest hearts, quickens and ennobles 
the most languishing spirits ; which throws down 
the proudest cedars of our human Lebanon, and 
uproots and prostrates the stoutest oaks of our 
human Bashan ; a power against which none 
can set himself, and still live, in the spiritual 
sense. But still this wind of mystery is the 
breath of life; and whether it reach us in the 
rushing hurricane or in the gentle zephyr, it 
proves itself to be the source of a new and 
sublime experience, and the beginning of a new 
and holy order of being, which is to ripen into 
the fulness of the life divine. 

But while the process is a mystery, the re- 
sults and influences growing out of the change 
are both plain to be seen, and easy to be 
understood. 



142 BASAL TRUTHS. 



'' Born from above," the man is a new crea- 
ture in the sense that '' old things have passed 
away, and all things have become new " within 
him. '*The things he once loved he now hates ; 
and the things he once hated he now loves." 
Every faculty of his spiritual being is quickened 
into newness of life. Every line of his thinking 
sets in a new and directly opposite direction. 
The earthly loses its influence, and the heavenly 
takes firm hold upon his soul. The perfections 
of the Almighty begin to bud and blossom in 
his life and to give promise of a rich and abun- 
dant fruitage, as regeneration shall deepen into 
sanctification, and the work of grace shall be 
carried to its completion. 

The first birth may, or may not, leave upon 
us the impress and characteristics of our earthly 
parents; so that the current proverb, *' like 
father, like son," is sometimes true, and some- 
times false. But the second birth always leaves 
upon us the impress and image of our Heavenly 
Father. Indeed, he is born i/i us; so that his 




REGENERATION. 143 



life becomes our life ; his thoughts our thoughts ; 
his ways our ways. We no longer live of our- 
selves, nor to ourselves ; but we live in and by 
His Spirit in our hearts. We are moulded and 
fashioned into his likeness ; and his candle shines 
brightly in our souls. Our faith becomes appar- 
ent in our doings. Our love is coined into a 
round of activities, each one of which bears the 
divine image and superscription. Our devotion 
rises to such levels as it could not before attain ; 
and our whole career utters forth the voice of 
the indwelling Deity, in a language which none 
can fail to understand. 

The kingdom of heaven is formed within us, 
and casts its golden glories over the earthly king- 
dom to which in a sense we still belong. Each 
day we live by this new power, we grow more 
and more into the similitude of him from whom 
it is received ; until the resemblance is perfected, 
and we ourselves are translated into his imme- 
diate presence, that he may reveal to us the ful- 
ness of his own eternal joy. 



144 BASAL TRUTHS. 

In view of all that we have said, shall we not 
not turn aside from the vanities of a perishing 
present, and seek this indwelling of God, as the 
life of our life, and the one source of our eternal 
hope ; ever bearing in mind the solemn and 
impressive words, '' Except a man be born from 
above, he cannot see the kingdom of God "? 



VII. 
ADOPTION. 



*' In the case of legal adoption amongst men, the 
adopted son might have the rights and privileges of 
sonship, although destitute of filial affection and obe- 
dience. But in divine adoption they are inseparably 
combined ; for no one is adopted who is not also 
born from above." — J, Buchanan, 



VII. 



ADOPTION. 



Behold what manner of love the Father hath 
bestowed upon tis, that we shoiUd be called the 
sons of God} 

The new life breathed into us by God in the 
great work of regeneration, at once necessitates, 
and leads us to expect, some change in our 
relationship to God, corresponding to the 
change thus wrought within ourselves. And it 
is also natural that we should seek for the 
record of such a change in the pages of that 
book which we have come to regard as the one 
trustworthy revelation of all matters belonging 
to the higher or spiritual aspects of our being. 

1 I John iii. i. 



148 BASAL TRUTHS. 



No sooner do we enter heartily upon such a 
search, than we discern, among the points of 
light which shine forth in the broad canopy of 
Scripture truth> a briUiant double-star, pouring 
down, upon mind and heart alike, the blended 
radiance of the two great declarations, that 
when the work of regeneration is completed 
in us, we are both justified before God, and 
adopted into the divine family. 

The first of these truths has been before your 
thought so often, as compared with the second, 
that we deem it wisest to dwell but briefly on 
the subject of our justification, and to devote 
the larger measure of our thought to a consid- 
eration of the less known but equally important 
matter of our adoption into the family of the 
Lord our God. 

*' Justification and adoption are relative 
changes, while regeneration is a real one ; " or, 
to put the matter yet more simply, justification 
and adoption are changes of our relation to 
God, while regeneration is a change in our 



ADOPTION. 



149 



nature, wrought, as we have said, by the power 
of God. It is, therefore, perfectly proper that 
we consider them together, because, moving in 
the same plane, the same line of argument will 
apply to both with equal force. 

Justification is, properly speaking, a forensic 
or legal term, and signifies the declaring or 
pronouncing a person righteous according to 
law. But even in our local courts this term is 
by no means synonymous with innocence; and 
a man is sometimes acquitted and released on 
the grounds that his deed was justifiable, even 
where the committal of the deed has not been 
denied. A man, moved by a feeling of hatred, 
in a spirit of cold-blooded premeditation takes 
away the life of his fellow, and we at once 
pronounce it murder, and declare his own life 
forfeit as the result. But if a man takes the life 
of another, as the only means of preserving his 
own, we pronounce it justifiable homicide, and 
allow him to go free. And on such a verdict, 
the man stands in the same relation to the law 



150 BASAL TRUTHS. 

as if the deed in question had not been com- 
mitted at all. 

So in a theological sense; justification is not 
a declaration of personal innocence, nor does it 
make a man holy in itself, but it holds and 
declares him to be free from the punishment 
which would otherwise follow his deeds. In a 
word, it liberates him from the penal results of 
the sins he has committed. 

It has been well defined as " an act of God's 
free grace in which he pardoneth all our sins, 
and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only 
for the righteousness of Christ imputed to 
us, and received through faith in his atoning 
death/' 

Briefly, then, we may say that while it is 
impossible to carry a complete parallel through 
all the processes of the justification of the 
earthly courts, and the justification bestowed 
upon us from above, yet the result in both cases 
is the same. When, here below, a man is fully 
acquitted, and the charges brought against him 



ADOPTION. 



tSi 



are shown to be groundless, he resumes the 
same position in society as before ; at least, so 
far as his relation to law is concerned. He is 
entitled to all the privileges of a good citizen, 
and is, or ought to be, admitted into every cir- 
cle of human association in which he had pre- 
viously moved ; and the honors and emoluments 
of his native land, or state, or town, are as fully 
open to his ambition and ability as to that of 
his fellow-men. 

So God, when he justifies, regards man as if 
he had not sinned at all. As Ezekiel says, 
*' None of his sins that he hath committed shall 
be mentioned unto him." He is considered to 
be clean and pure. He enters upon his new 
life with a clean newly-turned page before him; 
and thereafter his life is to be conditioned and 
estimated by what he writes upon that page, 
and not by the record of the leaves which 
have been turned already. His position in re- 
gard to God is as completely changed as is 
his character. *' Being justified by faith, he 



152 BASAL TRUTHS. 

has peace with God, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

Then follows, in strictly regular order, the 
adoption of the justified and regenerated sinner 
into the family of God; and to this wondrous 
manifestation of the divine mercy we now ask 
your closest and most thoughtful attention. 

There are few sweeter thoughts known to our 
tried and suffering humanity than those which 
cluster about the doctrine of the Fatherhood of 
God, When Jesus would administer the richest 
and fullest comfort to the sorrowing band of dis- 
ciples from whom he was about to be separated, 
he whispered into their ears and hearts those 
tender words of assurance, '' I will not leave you 
orphans." When Paul would raise, in the souls 
of the believing, the loftiest hopes, the grandest 
anticipations, and the broadest and fullest sense 
of their new liberty, he reminds them that they 
** have not received the spirit of bondage again 
to fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby they 
may cry, Abba, Father." When John, the 



ADOPTION. 



153 



greatest exponent of that love, which is the 
greatest gift of God to man, would set it before 
them in its richest and highest results, he ex- 
claims, ** Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should 
be called the sons of God." 

Studying our subject first upon its secular 
side, we may remark that in all Oriental coun- 
tries, adoption, as a civil process fully recog- 
nized by law, has been common from the far 
away ages of the great past. Among the Jews 
we have a long list of examples, beginning with 
Abraham, who adopted his steward, Eliezer, as 
recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, 
and reaching down to the very latest periods of 
their history as a nation. When the Greek civil- 
ization was at its best, the laws of Athens were 
so arranged that the power of adoption was 
allowed to all citizens who were of sound mind, 
and who possessed no male offspring of their 
own; and it could be exercised either during 
life, or by testament. 



154 BASAL TRUTHS. 

The Roman custom, on which the Pauline 
settings of this doctrine were doubtless founded, 
was a formal act, based on one of two legal 
processes, the first being called adrogation, and 
applying to all cases where the person to be 
adopted was of legal age, or otherwise inde- 
pendent of his parents; and the second, or that 
of adoption proper, which applied to cases in 
which the person to be adopted was an infant, 
or otherwise under his parents' control. 

But, in effect, both processes were precisely 
the same, the adopted person being entitled to 
the name, rank, and standing of the family into 
which the process brought him, and being fully 
recognized as its heir-at-law; while the father, 
on his part, was entitled to the use of any 
property which the new son might bring with 
him, and exercised toward him all the rights 
and privileges of a father, in the ordinary ac- 
ceptation of that term. In short, the relation- 
ship was to all intents and purposes the same as 
that which existed betw^een a natural father and 
his son. 



ADOPTION. 



155 



Lady Mary W. Montagu, in one of those price- 
less letters which every Christian woman should 
read, refers to the prevalence of this custom 
among the Turks, and especially among the 
Greeks and Armenians of our own time, and 
gives a beautiful description of the process still 
common among them* And occasionally we 
hear of instances occurring among ourselves, 
though it is not nearly so frequent in the civili- 
zations of the West as in those of the East. 

Between sacred and secular adoption there is 
a twofold agreement and disagreement. They 
agree in this, that both flow from the pleasure 
of the adopter, and also in the fact that both 
confer the right to privileges which we do not 
possess by nature. But in these points they 
differ. One is an act imitating nature; while the 
other transcends nature. The one was found 
out for the comfort of those that had no chil- 
dren; the other for the comfort of those that 
had no father. 

We are now better prepared for the religious 



156 BASAL TRUTHS. 

aspect of our theme; and as we turn to this, we 
offer for your thought the following definitions, 
from the writings of men widely differing in 
many of their theological opinions. 

Richard Watson puts his thought into these 
words: ** Adoption is that act of God by which 
we who were alienated, and enemies, and disin- 
herited, are made sons of God, and heirs of his 
eternal glory." Alexander Craig furnishes this 
definition : '' Adoption is an action whereby 
God takes a person into his family, in order 
to make him a part of it, acknowledges him 
as a son, and receives him into the number, 
and gives him a right to the privileges of his 
children." 

There is something in the very phrase '' a 
child of God," which moves the great deeps of 
human feeling, and awakens at once our wonder 
and our awe. The remotest possibility of such 
an experience ought to thrill every heart with an 
inexpressible joy. Either this doctrine of man's 
adoption into the family of God is a pitiable 



ADOPTION. 157 



illusion, or it is one of the grandest truths which 
ever fell on mortal ears. Surely we cannot fail 
to be interested in such a theme ! Surely we 
will not refuse to give to its consideration the 
profoundest thought of which we are capable ! 

And yet, the following statement of a modern 
writer must be admitted to be true: ''There 
are men who would ransack the records of every 
recorder's office in the State to establish their 
title to a farm or a corner lot ; or search the 
musty roll of names in the Records of Heraldry 
to trace their lineage to some bold Norman or 
Saxon robber; and who would be filled with 
delight to discover that, in the distant ages of 
the past, their blood had been tinged with that 
of royalty, who do not take a moment's thought 
to learn whether they are the children of the 
Lord, or the sons of Belial." 

How wonderful this is, and yet how w^onder- 
fully true ! How clearly it demonstrates that 
man has lost the knowledge of his heavenly 
birthright! He knows not that he is of royal 



i:8 BASAL TRUTHS. 



descent, nor does he discern, with any clearness, 
that he is wandering here on earth an outcast 
from an abiding kingdom, and an illustrious 
home which might and should be his. 

When the Danish missionaries stationed at 
Malabar set some of their converts to the work 
of translating a Catechism, in which it was 
asserted that believers became the sons of God, 
one of the translators was so startled that he 
suddenly laid down his pen and exclaimed, '' It 
is too much ! Let me rather render it. They 
shall be permitted to kiss his feet ! '* 

But this is by no means a common experi- 
ence among men. It more frequently happens, 
as we have just said, that this wondrous revela- 
tion of the divine love falls upon the ear, and 
yet fails to penetrate the heart. Indeed, it is 
only as we are regenerated by the Spirit of God 
that it becomes possible for us fully to under- 
stand and appreciate that richness of the divine 
mercy which ts thus brought into our view; 
but, when this great truth is fullv understood, 



ADOPTION. 159 



how much it means to us, both on God's part, 
and also on our own ! 

The adoption of the meanest beggar, or the 
vilest traitor, into the family of the greatest 
earthly monarch, to be heir of all his dignities, 
and to bear the honorable distinctions which 
cluster about his name, would be but a trivial 
matter in comparison with our adoption into 
the family of God. Such a change as we have 
just referred to, might only affect the outward 
circumstances of the recipient, and these but 
on the surface. The vexations of life, though 
assuming new forms and characteristics, might 
be just as numerous and just as trying as before. 
Such a change would not free him from the 
burdens of trial, nor from the grasp of death. 
Its good would be fleeting and evanescent, and 
would only help to prove that the distance be- 
tween the mightiest and the most abject of men 
is as nothing compared with that which subsists 
between man and God. 

God is our Father! The mystery of love 



l6o BASAL TRUTHS. 



contained in this simple statement is inexplica- 
ble. But, once imbued with this great thought, 
the experiences of every day will lead us to 
detect something fatherly in him which we had 
not observed before. Life itself seems different 
when this discovery is fully made. Earth's sun- 
shine is heaven's radiance. Duties take on the 
character of privileges. Work grows restful. 
Sorrows are recognized as heavenly presences. 
If we labor, it is beneath our Father's eye. If 
we rest, it is in the light and encouragement of 
his smile. In a sense, all human help becomes 
God's help; all human pity, God's pity; all 
human love, God's love. He is no longer far 
removed from us, but is present in the influences 
which reach us through our fellows, as well as 
in those which come directly from himself. We 
are members of a family circle, where God sits 
with us at the table, moves with us in our ordi- 
nary concerns, and directs our daily life at every 
step. He is the ever-present head of the house- 
hold, as near to each and all as are our fathers 
in the flesh. 



ADOPTION. i6l 



The privileges of the children of God con- 
sist not merely in the enjoyment of his presence 
and his love, but of his solicitude and his pro- 
tection. By this statement we do not wish to 
be understood to say that God is not solicitous 
for the welfare of those who are aliens, and not 
sons in this spiritual sense. God's care extends 
over all his creatures, animate and inanimate, 
rational and irrational, holy and sinful. The 
flowers which bloom in the solitary desert, the 
plants w^hich grow in the unseen caverns of the 
ocean, bloom and grow beneath his watchful 
eye. He provides the raven with its meat, and 
the lion with its prey. He regards with tender- 
ness the poor pagan, as he struggles with his 
burden of ignorance and superstition, and even 
calls after the sinner, who knowingly and wil- 
fully violates his law, and disregards his claims. 

But the solicitude which God exercises over 
his adopted children is deeper far than this. 
The barriers of sin being graciously removed 
by his pardoning mercy, they may come nearer 



1 62 BASAL TRUTHS. 



to him than is possible to their fellows. To 
their cry he specially inclines his ear. From 
the evils which surround them he specially de- 
livers and protects. Though, for his own wise 
ends, he may suffer them to pass through the 
paths of trial and of pain ; yet he blesses them 
in their afflictions, and causes each individual 
providence to aid in working out their good. If 
they walk in the shaded byways of poverty, he 
is still present, to w^ean their hearts from the 
w^orldly and the perishing, and to fix their affec- 
tions upon the eternal and the true. If for the 
present they are humbled, it is that they may 
be the more highly exalted ; if they are at times 
wearied and depressed, it is that they may learn 
to lean more constantly and more fondly upon 
the strong arm of the Father, who walks ever 
at their side. 

As members of the divine family we are to 
enter into all the joy and gladness of the family 
life. We are first to learn, and then to remem- 
ber, that no earthly father is, or can be, so near 



ADOPTION. 163 



and so helpful as this Father from above. Our 
own mothers, who gave us of their life, and sus- 
tained us from the fountains of their own being, 
who watched over our infancy, and ministered 
so tenderly to our years of helplessness, who 
have striven with an unfaltering love to protect 
us from life's dangers, and to guide and instruct 
us in the ways of safety and of peace, — our 
own mothers, who have labored, since the mo- 
ment in which they first clasped us to their 
throbbing hearts, to make the frigid zones of 
the earth-life warm and cheerful with the un- 
wavering sunshine of their unbounded affection, 
even these do not love as God loves ; even 
these do not care as God cares. 

Only as we rest ourselves in this rich and all- 
transcending love of the Heavenly Father, can 
we know and realize a perfect and unbroken 
peace. If there be such a thing as real satis- 
faction in the universe, it must be found in the 
friendship and fellowship of God. His nature 
is free from all disturbing elements; and the 



l64 BASAL TRUTHS. 



closer we come to him the more fully will his 
nature be imparted to us, and the more we par- 
take of his purity and perfection the deeper 
and diviner will be the harmony which will sur- 
round and permeate our life. 

We have only to retire into God, and em- 
bosom ourselves in his abounding and fatherly 
love, to be conscious of the most sublime tran- 
quillity. He will hide us in the heart of his 
goodness, till the calamities of the present shall 
be overpast; and will then bring us forth, bright 
with all the marks of the family likeness, that, 
with all the members of the heavenly house- 
hold, we may revel in the glories of the home 
he has prepared for us, and live in the sunlight 
of his smiling face for evermore. 

But we must be careful to remember, also, 
that this new relation which we bear to God, 
requires an adjustment of all other relations. It 
brings with it, not only a new and exalted round 
of privileges, but it calls for a new and devoted 
life of service. 



ADOPTION. 165 



Reverence is demanded. Love is asked in 
return for love bestowed. Obedience is as nec- 
essary to the well-being of the heavenly family 
as to that of the family of earth. Indeed, all 
the nice adjustments of a well-ordered family 
life may be made to serve as illustrations of our 
present theme ; and the whole being, with all its 
wondrous capabilities, must be brought into 
subjection to the will of him w^ho is the Head 
of the household. The heart with its love, the 
head with its understanding, the conscience with 
its quick response to the law of duty, the will 
with its powerful resolutions, all must be made 
subservient to the law and rule of him whose 
children we are, whose name we bear, and whose 
nature is imparted to us by this great chan^^. 

We may become familiar with God ; but our 
familiarity must be seasoned with reverence, 
and our reverence must be softened by our love. 
If we tremble before our new-found Father, it 
is because we forget that he is tender and affec- 
tionate. If we grow over-bold toward him, it 



l66 BASAL TRUTHS. 



is because we forget that he is great and holy. 
But reaHzing at once that he is our Father and 
our God, we shall speedily grow into the under- 
standing of the fact that the truest mark of son- 
ship is obedience to our Father's will, and the 
truest revelation of his fatherhood comes with 
the realization of the truth and depth of his all- 
comprehending love. 

Sons of God, be glad in your Father's good- 
ness ! Daughters of Jehovah, rejoice in your 
Father's care I Look onward and heavenward, 
without a care or fear. Heaven is the Father's 
dwelling, therefore heaven shall be the chil- 
dren's home; for, '' if children, then heirs, heirs 
of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ; if so be that 
we ^ffer with him, that we may be also glorified 
together. For I reckon that the sufferings of 
this present time are not worth}- to be compared 
with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 
For the earnest expectation of the creature 
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
God. For the creature was made subject to 



ADOPTION. 167 



vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who 
hath subjected the same in hope; because the 
creature itself, also, shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty 
of the children of God." 



VIII. 
PEACE. 



^' O peacefulness ! angel of tranquillity, with the 
gentle smile of heaven ! happy the man over whom 
thou holdest thy palm-branch in defence, so that he 
finds peace around and within him, and quietly per- 
forms his daily work ! happy the people in whom thy 
gentle spirit prevails ! happy the house which thou 
hast chosen for an abode, in which the dwellers, re- 
turning from the struggle of life, recover their lost 
quiet." —DeWette. 



VIII. 
PEACE. 

Peace I leave with yo2c, my peace I give 7mto 
you : not as the world giveth, give I tinto yon. 
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid} 

There is a charm amounting almost to fasci- 
nation about the subHme chapter in which these 
words stand recorded. The nature of the state- 
ment made, and the circumstances in which this 
statement finds its setting, are of an order to 
command the closest thought and the deepest 
feeling possible to Christian minds and hearts; 
for we have here the record of what is practi- 
cally the last connected conversation of Jesus 

1 John xiv. 27. 



1/2 BASAL TRUTHS. 



with his disciples before the enactment of the 
sad scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary, in which 
his earth-life found its bitter ending. 

The day of life is closing, then ; and Jesus 
recognizes the fact. The evening sky is full of 
storm clouds, but the brightness of his holy life 
is tingeing those clouds with radiant hues; and 
this last tender message to the faithful few 
shines out like a bank of gold amid the purpling 
glories of the setting sun ; the rich after-glow 
of that life-long gentleness which had bound 
him so closely to their every heart. 

But as the end draws nearer, and these last 
counsels reach their culmination, the faltering 
voice grows still more tender, and the interest 
deepens to an intensity such as we can now 
barely comprehend. The heavenly home has 
been depicted; the declaration of his continued 
presence and special manifestation has been 
made. The nature and mission of the coming 
Comforter has been explained to them ; and 
now he reaches his climax in the words of the 



PEACE. 



1/3 



text: *' Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 
unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto 
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
let it be afraid." Such are the terms in which 
he couches his last legacy to his followers; and 
such is the theme which is now to occupy our 
thought. 

Viewed from any standpoint this is certainly 
a very remarkable utterance ; but the most re« 
markable feature of the whole is found in the 
fact that in this last gift to his people, Jesus 
establishes, or at least seems to establish, a 
direct point of connection between the principles 
of his religion and the object of man's universal 
desire. 

Scarcely is the thrill of the scene here de- 
picted greater than that we feel in the contem- 
plation of the experience of a perfect and 
unbroken peace. The very word falls upon 
our ears with a rhythmic and restful softness, 
such as but few of our words possess. It repre- 
sents a state of mind far more to be desired 



174 BASAL TRUTHS. 

than the joy of prosperity^ or the ecstasy which 
accompanies success. 

Perfect peace is reahzed but by a few men, 
and by these only at intervals ; but when it 
comes, it is like a glimpse of heaven. In its 
gentle presence the impatience and the fretful- 
ness, the envy and the discontent, the restless- 
ness and the fear, which so often make life a 
burden to ourselves and others, die away into 
dreamy memories ; and love and sympathy, 
tenderness and grace, courage and contentment, 
fling their golden radiance upon our pathway, 
and form the inspiration under which we go 
forward to the accomplishment of life's purposes 
with an absence of care and friction which is 
astonishing even to ourselves. 

Surely, then, we can well afford to turn aside 
for a little space from the rush and whirl of 
worldly things, and strive to hold our minds 
to the careful study of the nature of this sublime 
legacy of Jesus, and the conditions upon which 
we may enter upon the possession and enjoy- 



PEACE. 175 



ment of the inheritance thus provided for us 
through his wondrous grace and love. 

Our first observation is, that this peace is not 
a negative, but a positive blessing. It is neither 
inactivity, nor the result of inactivity. It is more 
than ease and quietness. To be peaceful is more 
than to be care-free. It is an actual and real 
attainment. It is, first, the balancing and har- 
monizing of the many and varying elements 
of our nature ; the reconcilement of its diver- 
gencies ; the equipoise and serenity, the deep 
and abiding calm, which follows when passion 
and sense, intellect and heart, are brought to- 
gether and their interests made one. And 
secondly, it is the impartation of a divine some- 
thing, which settles and stays the soul by the 
removal of those sensations of fear which result 
from a conscious lack of the friendship and 
favor of God. 

John Ruskin writes very close to the heart 
of this matter, when he declares that " No peace 
was ever won from fate by subterfuge or agree- 



176 BASAL TRUTHS. 



ment. No peace is ever in store for any of us 
but that which we shall win by victory over 
shame or sin ; victory over the sin which op- 
presses, as well as over that which corrupts." 

We may therefore define the peace here 
spoken of as consisting, on its earthly side, in 
the right adjustment of all our powers to the 
circumstances in which we are placed; and, on 
its heavenly side, in the complete removal from 
our nature of those disturbing elements which 
are the results and outgrowths of sin. 

It will readily be seen that such a definition 
distinguishes the blessing in question from the 
mere rest of inactivity on the one hand, and 
from the bounding exhilaration of an active 
joy upon the other; and the distinction may 
be made even more clear by the use of the 
following illustration. 

The rest of inactivity may be likened to the 
motionless and pestilential waters of a stagnant 
pool. Joy may be symbolized by the roaring 
cataract, as it rushes on through mist and foam 



PEACE. 



177 



to its home in the far-off sea. Peace may be 
imaged by the calmly flowing brook. 

From this we may gather that peace is not 
always rest from trial and hardship, but rest 
in trial and hardship. It does not necessarily 
imply deliverance from disagreeable and unto- 
ward influences and events, but power to grapple 
these successfully, and bring them into subjec- 
tion, and transform them into elements of good. 

To understand this more fully, we must re- 
member that the peace thus promised is spoken 
of by Jesus as '' My peace," and the word " my " 
is here emphatic. And on looking into the 
Master's life, we quickly discover this peace 
to be that inward and sacred quiet which he 
enjoyed throughout his outwardly tempestuous 
career; which enabled him to stand unmoved 
and immovable in the presence of infuriated 
multitudes ; which held him in beautiful equi- 
poise under the taunts and oppositions of his 
foes; and which sustained his soul in calm and 
holy tranquillity in the midst of an unbroken 



178 BASAL TRUTHS. 

series of trials, such as human being had never 
previously been called upon to endure. 

We shall also do well to note, before proceed- 
ing further, that the peace in question is pre- 
sented to our thought, not only as a positive, 
but as a present blessing. The verb here is un- 
questionably in the present tense; so that the 
meaning is not '' My peace will I give to you ; '' 
but rather, '' My peace I now give to you." 

Peace at the end of life's journey we all ex- 
pect ; and with this expectation we are far too 
apt to be content. But it has been well and 
truthfully written, — 

" Peace is not quitting this busy career, 
Peace is the fitting the soul to its sphere ; " 

and as this couplet appears to be strictly in line 
with the teachings of the gospel, and with the 
actual experience of many who live under its 
grace and power, we are justified in the con- 
clusion we have reached, that the peace of the 
text may be, and should be, experienced here 
and now. 



PEACE. 179 

This peace is also represented as being be- 
stowed upon different conditions, and in differ- 
ent manner, from the ordinary gifts which reach 
us through earthly and material sources. 

Even such peace as the church has professed 
to bestow upon its votaries must be won through 
patience and suffering, through penance and 
conflict. Nowhere does it appear as a free gift. 
Nowhere is it put upon such a plane as to make 
it possible that it should become the common 
heritage of all. 

On the field of business life, or in the deep 
vales of scientific research, the peace proffered 
is but too frequently an ig7iis fatmis, that lures 
men onward through the thickets and under- 
brush of growing difficulties, into the dismal 
swamps of disappointment and despair. 

But life is altogether too precious a gift to 
be thus thrown away. A man who would permit 
a field to be overgrown with weeds and thorns, 
simply because it would not naturally produce 
roses, would be very foolish to say the least ; 



l8o BASAL TRUTHS. 



particularly if he knew that the ground only 
needed proper cultivation to enable it to 
produce good and abundant crops of corn. 
And if there are wild growths in our nature 
which may be crowded out and destroyed by 
the introduction of such an element as that 
which is here presented to our view; then it 
is the part of wisdom to possess ourselves of 
such a gift as quickly as we may. 

The problem to be solved is, Is this peace 
the gift of piety? Are there elements in the 
faith of Jesus which are thus calculated to hush 
the soul to quiet, and to fill the daily life with 
this chiefest form of good? Does religion form 
the one and only pathway along which a suc- 
cessful search for peace must be prosecuted? 

We have already said, in substance, that 
peace consists partly in the perfect adjustment 
of the soul to its environment, and partly in the 
adjustment of the soul to itself. 

But the soul is an emanation from God, and, 
to a certain degree, it partakes of the nature of 



PEACE. l8l 

God. This phase of our being cannot be dis- 
regarded, but its demands must be met and 
satisfied before anything Hke harmony can be 
estabhshed and enjoyed. 

So stern and constant are these demands, that 
the Bible does not exaggerate when it repre- 
sents the soul as constantly crying out for God; 
and to such an extent has this need come to be 
universally acknowledged, that not to believe 
in some being outside of, and superior to our- 
selves, is regarded as a mark of moral insanity. 

A character which is not softened and beauti- 
fied, enlarged and sweetened by religion, is felt 
to be radically defective ; and the element which 
is lacking is known to be the very element of 
religion itself. 

A personal trust in a personal God is the 
golden thread which runs through the otherwise 
dull and sombre fabric of a human life, and 
gives it a glint and sparkle which lights up and 
changes the character of the pattern from first 
to last. Under its benign influences, the spirit 



l82 BASAL TRUTHS. 



of man catches foregleams of its immortality of 
bliss ; and the doubts and perplexities which 
have disturbed its equanimity are thrust out, 
and replaced by hopes which amount to cer- 
tainties, and joys which cannot be taken away. 

Of course, the calibre and tone of our religious 
experience must here be taken into the account. 
To a man whose religious life is of the bright 
and happy order, the world always looks pleas- 
ant, the heavens smile kindly upon him, and 
the Divine Spirit witnesses with his own that he 
is in sweet and loving accord with God. Joy 
thrills him as he greets the morning light, and 
peace nestles upon his heart as he lies down to 
his nightly rest. But the man who has become 
soured in his faith, w^ho is ill at ease with him- 
self, his fellows, and his God, finds it easy to 
persuade himself that he has committed the 
unpardonable sin ; or to conjure up a thousand 
pictures in his disordered imagination, any one 
of which would be fatal to the incoming of 
peace and rest. 



PEACE, 



183 



If a man who professes to be a Christian lives 
a Hfe out of touch with all with which humanity 
sympathizes; a life barren of attractive fruit; 
a life with no genial outflow and expression ; a 
life of niggardly negatives, rather than of gen- 
erous positives ; then, however excellent he may 
be in other respects, none will venture to imitate 
him ; few will really love him, or believe in the 
Christianity of which he is a professed exponent: 
and such a religious experience will always fail 
to be productive of anything like real peace 
within himself. 

But the very fact that these marked divergen- 
cies are to be observed in men, is proof in itself 
that there are influences at work in some lives 
which are lacking in others ; and as we strive to 
grasp and analyze those forces which mould 
men after this better pattern, we invariably find 
that they resolve themselves at last into this ; 
the full and conscious surrender of the soul to 
God ; a sincere and unquestioning acceptance 
of his will as best ; the establishment of his 



184 BASAL TRUTHS. 



beneficent rule in the hidden sources, as well as 
on the surface of the life. 

Perhaps the simplest way to prove that peace 
is not the result of earthly influences or events, 
is to notice the marked extent to which it is 
unaffected by these things. Sickness cannot 
destroy it, and trials often serve but to reveal 
its real strength. Poverty cannot rob us of its 
riches, and care cannot take away its rest. Be- 
reavements only make us clasp it to our hearts 
the closer, and the approach of death only 
brings its blessed consummation more clearly 
into view. Thus we learn the meaning of the 
statement that '' the world cannot give it, and 
the world cannot take it away." 

And the other half of this truth is, that when- 
ever we discover true peace in a human life, and 
seek to trace it to its source, we invariably find 
that the distinguishing characteristics of the 
life in question are a simple trust of heart in 
the wisdom and goodness of God, and a sincere 
endeavor to do his blessed will. 



PEACE. 185 

Once again, therefore, we may assert that the 
first prerequisite of peace is faith in the high 
purposes and glorious possibihties of our own 
being ; and the second is, a true and loyal devo- 
tion to the will and work of God. 

But little further need be said, and that little 
may be mainly a repetition of what has gone 
before. There is always a possibility of peace 
for the pure and upright mind ; there is no pos- 
sibility of true and abiding peace to the mind 
that is warped and twisted by sin. The princi- 
ples and practice of godliness form the only soil 
in which quietness of heart can grow. The 
faith of the gospel not only delivers from sin 
and its evil results, but it teaches that our whole 
life is surrounded, watched over, and personally 
conducted and cared for by a Being whose wis- 
dom is perfect, and whose love can know no 
bound. 

Walking in a holy companionship with God, 
we gradually grow into his likeness ; and as his 
love and sympathy begin to bear rule in us, one 



I 86 BASAL TRUTHS. 



of the first things we discover is, that these 
graces tend to the promotion of inward quietude 
and rest. And as the heart grows more restful, 
the interests and enjoyments of hfe become 
more pleasant and complete, and the world, 
which was transformed into a barren wilderness 
by the unreasonable and impossible demands 
of our selfishness, is again transfigured into a 
paradise of beauty, as our quiet spirits cast over 
it the rich, warm light of our content. 

Do not imagine, however, that this quiet life 
must necessarily be insipid and dull. This has 
been the disastrous blunder of thousands of our 
fellows. The change referred to does not rob 
life of its interests and enchantments, but only 
takes from these those stings of evil which de- 
prived them of their richest beauty and their 
highest worth. Only the darker shades are 
removed from life's pictures ; and the soul looks 
out upon the same landscape as before, but 
beholds it flooded with the golden radiance of 
the sun that shines within. 



PEACE. 



187 



Trials and temptations may still assail us ; 
suffering and hardship may still be our lot; but 
in the midst of these, we may enter into our 
closet and shut to the door, and, throwing our- 
selves upon our heavenly Father's care, may feel 
the gentle pulsations of his love breaking over 
our spirits as the waves of the summer's seas 
break in gentle ripples upon the sunlit strand. 

Such are the thoughts which come to us as 
we dwell upon the precious utterance, '' Peace 
I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you : 
not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let 
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid." And how can we better conclude our 
meditation than in the use of the prayer, '' May 
the peace of God, which passeth all understand- 
ing, keep our hearts and minds in the knowl- 
edge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus 
Christ our Lord ; " that, knowing and loving 
him, we may learn to possess our souls in 
patience here, and hereafter may know this 
blessing in the fulness of its power ! 



IX. 
HOPE. 



" Hope is a marvellous inspiration which every 
heart confesses in some season of extremest peril ; it 
can pat nerv^e into the languid, and fleetness jjito the 
feet of exhaustion. Let the slim and feathery palm- 
grove be dimly descried, though ever so remotely, 
and the caravan will on, spite of the fatigue of the 
traveller and the simoom's blinding, to where, by the 
fringy rootlets, the desert waters flow ; let there 
glimmer one star through the murky waste of night, 
and though the spars be shattered, and the sails be 
riven, and the hurricane how4s for its prey, the brave 
sailor will be lashed to the helm, and see already 
through the tempests breaking, calm waters and a 
spotless sky." — fV. M. Piuishon. 




IX. 
HOPE. 



For we are saved by hope. But hope that is 
see?i is not hope ; for what a man seethy why 
doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that 
we see not, then do we with patience zvait for 
it} 

In our last discourse we discussed the subject 
of peace ; that inward rest, that quietness of 
soul, which results from the fact that we have 
been delivered from our sin-burdens, and made 
members of the family of God. But it is a 
matter of common experience, that no sooner 
does the human spirit come into this state of 
inward rest, than it enters upon a course of 

^ Romans viii. 24-25. 



192 BASAL TRUTHS. 

outward and upward aspiration; and the beck- 
onine lisrhts which lead men forward in this 
upward career, are the lamps of Christian Hope. 

To understand this, we must first learn to 
regard life in its threefold aspect, as related to 
past, present, and future. There are certain 
facts in the past which must be believed ; there 
is a certain kind of life in the present which 
must be lived ; and there are certain things in 
store in the future which must be looked for. 
Hence, the three great practical doctrines of the 
Christian religion are presented as faith, charity, 
and hope; and to misinterpret, or to remain in 
ignorance of either of these great principles, is to 
narrow and restrict our life in a proportionate 
degree. 

It has been beautifully said that " faith is the 
root, love the fruit-bearing stem, and hope the 
heaven-reaching crown, of the true Christian 
life." And again we hear it said that " faith 
appropriates the grace of God in the facts of 
salvation; love is the animating spirit of our 



HOPE. 



193 



present Christian experience; while hope takes 
hold of the future, as belonging to the Lord, 
and therefore to those that are his." All these 
sentiments are beautiful, and all are doubtless 
true ; but to us they are somewhat blind and 
hazy, until we come to a clear understanding of 
hope considered in itself. 

What then, is this principle, of which Pope 
has declared that it '' springs eternal in the hu- 
man breast; " and of which Diogenes, the Gre- 
cian philosopher, has said, that '' it is the last 
thing which dies in man?" 

Turning to Webster we find that he defines it 
as '^ a desire of some good, accompanied with 
at least a slight expectation of obtaining it; or 
a belief that it is attainable.'' If anything 
further is demanded, we might put our own 
thought into these words : Hope is the ability to 
triumph over the present, by the aid of the future. 

Either of these definitions, or both combined, 
will serve to show how closely hope is related 
to faith; and yet these two graces are by no 

13 



194 BASAL TRUTHS. 



means one and the same. Taken, for example, 
in their relation to the great principles of reli- 
gion, we find that while both have to do w^ith 
the rich promises of God, they deal with these 
by methods of their own. Hope looks at the 
excellency of the promise ; faith at its certainty. 
Hope reads over, and dwells upon, the terms of 
the promise; faith simply glances at its seal, 
and is content. Faith believes ; hope waits. 
*' Hope is the anchor, and faith the cable of the 
life;" and both do their part in holding us 
firmly to the holy and the true ; or in preserving 
us from drifting into sin, or dashing upon the 
rocks of error. 

In the economy of divine grace, hope is of 
inestimable value. We are '' heirs of God, and 
joint-heirs with Jesus Christ," as we have seen 
already ; but this period of our existence is the 
period of our minority; and while we remain 
here, it is impossible for us to enter into the 
full possession of our sublime inheritance. But 
hope steps in and links the fleeting present to 



HOPE. 195 

the abiding future. It raises our aspirations 
from the struggle-Hfe of earth, and leads us to 
the contemplation of a state of being which is 
endless, beatific, and divine. 

The life we see through the lenses of hope's 
great telescope is a life devoid of all changes, 
save those which arise from its accumulating 
glory. It is a life of perpetual energy and fresh- 
ness, and secure in its infinitude of bliss. The 
conflict which agitates the universe to-day is a 
conflict between the powers of a life unending, 
and a death that never dies. We carry a 
boundless infinitude of being within us, even 
now. We have entered upon a career which 
knows no bounds. Hope links the several sec- 
tions of this boundless career into oneness ; and 
makes past, present, and future, parts of an 
eternal whole. 

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that 
this subject has always held the thought of men 
with a most powerful grip. From the mytho- 
logical lore of ancient Greece, there has come 



196 BASAL TRUTHS. 

down to us the familiar story of Pandora's box. 
This wondrous casket, which is said to have 
been brought down to earth from the dweUing 
of the gods, is represented as containing all the 
blessings which the gods originally designed for 
the good of the human race. But the blessings 
were embodied in the various orders of the 
birds ; and when the box was opened, all took 
wing and fled away, with the solitary exception 
of hope, which still remains as a divine gift to 
man. Only a heathen legend, we grant you ; 
but it contains a truth which needs to be better 
understood. 

This truth is emphasized, and somewhat en- 
larged, in those lines of Professor Wilson, which 

read, — 

'• Oh, what were life, 

Even in the warm and summer light of joy. 
Without those hopes that, like refreshing gales 
At evening from the sea, come o'er the soul, 
Breathed from the ocean of eternity ? " 

Hope is a constant benediction in a world 
like this ; for our past pleasures, while they feast 



HOPE. 197 

the memory, leave the heart aching with a sense 
of their desertion; and our present enjoyments 
wither ere they bloom. Some such gift as 
hope becomes a necessity ; for the soul must 
look onward to realities more enduring, or it 
cannot be at peace. 

But it is time that our study assumed a more 
definite form ; and we therefore proceed to la}' 
down for our discussion, two simple proposi- 
tions, selected from the many which our theme 
offers, and which may be stated as follows : — 

I. Hope is a powerful motive-force in Chris- 
tian activity; and, 

II. Hope is a source of strength to carry us 
through the difficulties of the present, and on 
into the rest and blessedness of the future. 

I. In opening up the first of these topics we 
may say that hope is not merely a principle of 
action ; but it is a thoroughly 7'ational and prac- 
tical principle of action. It is possessed of an 
almost illimitable power, even in our worldly 
undertakings. Those great business enterprises 



igS BASAL TRUTFIS. 

which are the glory of our age, are all born of 
the hope of future advantage. It is largely 
because of the expectation of a coming good, 
that men sacrifice present comforts, and en- 
counter present difficulties. Hope stimulates 
and carries forward our commonest affairs to a 
degree which we shall do well to study with 
more than ordinary care; for if hope should 
depart, even from the business world, our mer- 
cantile life would speedily come to a standstill; 
and our commerce sink into the inaction of 
despair. 

But in the matters which relate to religious 
life and work, this truth, so generally admitted 
in the business world, is strangely and persist- 
ently disregarded. There are vast numbers of 
well-meaning but mistaken men and women in 
the Christian churches of to-day, who do not 
seem to have grasped the wondrous and uplift- 
ing energy which hope affords to those who 
have appropriated its blessings, and learned to 
use its added strength. These persons have ngt 



HOPE. 199 

discovered that while hope is a bird of paradise, 
in the gorgeous beauty of its plumage ; in its 
strength of wing, and power of flight, it is a 
veritable eagle; looking and soaring sunward, 
without sign of weariness, or disposition to 
descend to the lower and more hazy levels 
inhabited by despair. 

The result is, that these Christian men and 
women think backward, instead of forward, in 
their searchings after good. They love to look 
back to some particular period in the history of 
the church, which they have come to regard as 
a sort of golden age ; an age in which com- 
munities of saintly men and women, standing 
firmly together for the furtherance of the faith, 
formed a church which pressed joyfully onward, 
untroubled by doubts and dissensions, and un- 
stained by worldliness and sin. 

We have simply to say, to all such, there is 
no such golden age to be found in the past 
history of the church. Beginning with the 
times of the apostles, and tracing the records 



200 BASAL TRUTHS. 

of the successive epochs, from their day to 
the present, we find that each succeeding age 
has known the bitterness of trial and unrest. 
Though we may seek, as others have done 
before us, to look at the past through that hazy 
glow which the overwrought imagination of 
many of our writers of church history has cast 
about it; yet the facts tell their own story, and 
in the light of these facts, the golden mist is 
scattered, and the illusory visions rapidly 
disappear. 

The age in which we live will compare favor- 
ably with any age which has preceded it. While 
the depth of piety has not materially decreased, 
its breadth has materially increased. Not only 
is the measure of learning and culture which 
the church commands, greatly in advance of 
that of the times gone by; but, in these latter 
days, piety has moved out from the retirement 
of the convent, and into the active walks of 
daily life. She is taking her place in the open 
world, as one of its most potent factors. Relig- 



HOPE. 



20I 



ious thought and business thrift are being joined 
together in holy wedlock, to an extent such as 
was not known in the so-called golden days 
agone ; and the grounds of Christian hope are 
broader, and firmer, and deeper set, than ever 
heretofore. 

In making this broad assertion, we do not 
mean to say that the world has come either to 
a period of perfect purity, or of perfect rest. 
Difficulties and dangers are about us still. The 
tempests of worldly opposition are yet abroad 
in the earth, and their howling voices mingle 
even with our songs of thankfulness and praise. 
But still, — 

" On Truth's substantial rock Hope takes her seat, 
While waves tumultuous dash against her feet; 
The sky with blackness now becomes o'erspread; 
The tempest threatens her devoted head. 
Louder, and louder still, the thunders sound ; 
The lightning flings its fearful glare around ; 
Creation trembles: But fast-anchored there, 
Hope sits unshaken, never in despair ; 
With eyes turned upward, whence her help descends, 
She sits expecting till the tempest ends." 



202 BASAL TRUTHS. 



Our impressions of the final defeat or triumph 
of the gospel will be largely influenced by the 
medium through which we look out upon the 
position of the gospel in the world of to-day. If 
we use the far-reaching telescope of hope, we 
shall probably become optimistic in our views ; 
but if we use the short-sighted spectacles of 
despair, we shall become pessimistic beyond a 
doubt. 

Despair looks inward upon the struggle be- 
tween good and evil, and says, *' I shall one day 
fall by the hand of my enemy.'* But hope 
looks away to Jesus, and cries, '* I shall yet 
triumph through his death." Despair looks out- 
ward upon the evils of to-day, and says, '' The 
world is rapidly going to the bad." But hope 
looks onward to the reformations of to-morrow, 
and sees this same world aglow with the light 
and joy of a present and all-victorious Christ. 

If the present is an age of peculiar dangers, 
and of religious indifference ; it is also an age of 
peculiar encouragement, and boundless hopes. 



HOPE. 



203 



New doors are opening to the gospel, day by 
day; and new triumphs are recorded with 
almost every passing hour. But if we would be 
successful laborers in God's vineyard, we must 
learn that fully half our work consists in wait- 
ing'^ and that the inspiration of true waiting is 
the patience which is born of hope. 

But waiting is not idleness. Under the influ- 
ence of hope it is changed from a passive to an 
active grace. We are to wait expectantly ; and 
thus hope, as we have said, becomes a great 
motive-power ; and not to cultivate this gift is 
to deprive ourselves of one of the mightiest 
forces at our command. 

But even amid our busiest anxieties, circum- 
stances arise in which this same grace can alone 
aflford us help. Legend says that Charlemagne, 
in his great fight with the Saracens, found him- 
self outnumbered ; and as the best and bravest 
of his troops had fallen, and the army of France 
was several miles back in the valleys of the 
Pyrenees, the situation was fast growing des- 



204 BASAL TRUTHS. 

perate. But as a last resort, he seized the 
trumpet from the hand of one of his men, and 
blew a vigorous blast; and the story goes on to 
tell how the sound leaped from crag to crag, 
and from mountain-peak to mountain-peak, 
until it reached the ears of the French armv. 
and they came to his rescue, delivered him from 
his peril, and turned a seeming defeat into a 
certain victory. 

Hope is the loud-voiced trumpet of the Chris- 
tian's need, calling upon the unseen forces which 
environ him on every side, and bringing to his 
aid the powers he cannot otherwise behold. It 
is the prophetic voice of coming good, opening 
our eyes to the hidden and the obscure; and 
which, in the valleys of our struggle with the 
forces of evil, enables us to look upward, and 
see the mountain-peaks above us aglow with the 
chariots and horsemen of our God. 

In the activities of a Christian career, such a 
power cannot fail to be an inspiration; and 
hence, we may consider our first proposition to 



II 



HOPE. 



205 



be clearly established to every fair-thinking and 
impartial mind. 

II. Our second proposition is, that hope is a 
source of strength to carry us through the diffi- 
culties of the present, and on into the rest and 
blessedness of the future. 

It is in its relation to the things which are 
spiritual and eternal, that the power of hope 
comes most clearly into view. It lightens every 
burden, consoles in every sorrow, and derives a 
present joy from every future good. It supplies 
the soul with substantial objects for its con- 
templation, thus calling off the thoughts from 
the sorrows, shadows, and vanities of earth. It 
enables us to look through all present defeats, 
and to see beyond them, the glow of coming 
victory. Amid the difficulties and the dangers 
which surround and hem us in on every side, it 
lifts up its voice and cries, ^' Be of good cour- 
age, and he shall strengthen your hearts, all ye 
that hope in the Lord." 

If man is a pilgrim, journeying to a far coun- 



206 BASAL TRUTHS. 



try, hope is a sturdy staff on which he may 
securely lean. If human life is represented as 
a stormy sea, hope is pictured as an anchor, 
holding us firmly until the storm be overpast. 
If life is set forth as a warfare, then hope figures 
as a helmet, to protect us from the heavy and 
oft-repeated sword-strokes of our foe. If life is 
pictured as a night of darkness, then hope is 
represented as a star, shedding its silvery radi- 
ance upon the surrounding gloom. If life is 
declared to be a vale of tears, then hope is a 
bright-winged bird, which sings its sweetest 
song when the heart is saddest, and, by its song, 
hushes the soul to peace and rest. 

Indeed, hope is peculiarly a Christian grace. 

The tendency to look into the future, rather 
than into the past, for our types of perfection, 
and the realization of our highest good, was 
brought into the world with the revelation of 
God ; but it was brightened by the declarations 
of Christianity into a mirror in which we might 
see his loving face. 



HOPE. 



207 



Ancient literature gives us few, if any, positive 
assurances of the progress of society from the 
lower to the higher, from the evil to the pure. 
But the Scriptures, and particularly the Scrip- 
tures of the New Testament, glow with the 
glory of a thousand precious promises, which 
culminate in the sublime statement that '' every 
knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father." 

Hope is also of great value in Christian living, 
because of its permanence. Diogenes uttered 
a great and glorious truth when he said, *' Hope 
is the last thing that dies in man." But had 
he been acquainted with the Christian's hope, 
he would have been able to give utterance to 
the still greater truth, hope never really dies 
at all. This thought it was which enabled one 
of the great poets of the last generation to sing, 

*' When, wrapped in fire, the realms of ether glow, 
And Heaven's last thunders shake the world below ; 
Hope, undismay'd, shall o'er the ruins smile, 
And light her torch at Nature's funeral pile." 



208 BASAL TRUTHS. 



Hope lends the sense of its own permanence 
to all things on which it rests; but its chief 
function is to lead us on to higher and yet 
grander things. It illuminates the present, but 
it gilds and glorifies the future. It entwines 
its own brilliant colors about the edges of the 
clouds which hang above us ; and then cries 
Onward ! Upward ! these clouds will be all- 
glorious as you see them from their other side. 
It even shapes the darkest of them into mystic 
and fantastic arches ; flashes its glowing lights 
upon them ; and declares them to be the 
doorways leading into the city of the Great 
King. 

The historian Hume used to say, ** The habit 
of looking at the bright side of things was 
better than an income of a thousand pounds a 
year;'' and it is said of Oliver Cromwell that 
" hope shone like a fiery pillar in him, when it 
had gone out in all others." And as we read the 
biographies of these men, it is easy to trace the 
steady and life-long perseverance of the one, 



HOPE, 209 

and the numerous victories of the other, to the 
influence of this great and wondrous power. 

If we could write the history of Christian 
hope, we might produce a new and extensive 
library, crowded with such facts as could not 
fail to be helpful to the struggling sons of men. 
If we could chronicle all its triumphs, we might 
spread before the world the record of the most 
astonishing and brilliant victories which it has 
ever known. 

Life devoid of hope would be heavy, and 
spiritless, and dull; hard to bear, and scarcely 
worth the bearing. But hope forms an ever- 
flowing stream of consolation and of strength, 
on the banks of which, like evergreens of beauty, 
grow the sturdy trees of inspiration and aspira- 
tion, on the fruits of which we may sustain our- 
selves as we press forward to our rest. Rooted 
in the love of the eternal God, it cannot fail us. 
Because God is our Father, and all things are 
in his hand ; and because the whole structure of 
nature and providence is set to bring his chil- 

14 



2IO BASAL TRUTHS. 

dren into his own abiding home; therefore our 
hope is " sure and steadfast; '' therefore it is an 
uphft and a help ; therefore it begets in us the 
assurance that the spiritual life which dwells 
in our hearts already, shall be perpetuated in 
eternity; and thus it fills the soul with peace. 
Cultivate this grace to the utmost of your 
ability. Regard it as one of the great necessi- 
ties of your nature. Believe in hope ; pray in 
hope; trust in hope; live in hope; and you 
shall then die in hope; and exchange your 
checks of anticipation for their full equivalents 
in the pure gold of realization, as you enter into 
the blessedness of an eternal heaven. 



X. 
LOVE. 



" Show me what thou truly lovest, show me what 
thou seekest w^ith thy whole heart, and thou hast 
thereby shown me thy life. This love is the root and 
central part of thy being. What thou lovest is tha.t 

thou hvest." — Fichte. 



X. 



LOVE. 

He that dwelleth m love dwelleth in God, and 
God in him} 



** The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one, 
But the light of the whole world dies with the setting sun. 
The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one, 
But the light of the whole life dies when the love is done." 

So sang an old poet in Addison's ** Spec- 
tator," nearly a century and a half ago; and his 
song touches the very core of the great theme 
now to come before our thought. It also leads 
us to say, as we open our study, that while it is 
true that faith is the queen of the graces; we 
must by no means overlook the fact that love 
is king. 

1 I John iv. i6. 



214 BASAL TRUTHS. 



In our present treatment of this subject, it is 
not so much our purpose to deal with any 
specific manifestations of love, either human or 
divine, as to consider it more broadly, in its 
nature and effects. Incidentally, some exam- 
ples may be noted; but love as love, considered 
in itself, must be understood to be our theme. 

We enter upon our task by asserting that the 
influence of love upon the world's past has 
been simply immeasurable. Go back along the 
track of time, and erase from the world's history 
the deeds which have been wrought, the self- 
denials w^hich have been borne, the lives which 
have been lived, for love's sweet sake ; and in 
so doing, you would blot out every ray of 
brightness, and reduce the record of our past 
to a dark, barren, and desolate waste. Love 
has been the moving force in all noble living, 
and the mainspring of all true advancement, in 
every land, and in every age ; and to-day, love 
is the heart and centre of all life that is really 
worthy of the name. Remove it, and no indi- 



LOVE. 215 

vidual life would be worth the living. Destroy 
it utterly, and society could not maintain itself; 
but would fall into the chaos of an irretrievable 
ruin before the setting of the sun. 

Love reigns triumphant in every high and 
exalted form of civilized life of which we have 
any knowledge. It sways the mightiest sceptres 
and the mightiest intellects, with equal ease. It 
is the master-force of our being; the power to 
which all other powers must bend. The man 
who does not love is out of the drift and trend 
of true progress. He is out of harmony with 
all right beings and things. He is dwarfish, 
and stunted, and devoid of the elements of 
growth and strength. He is among the jarring 
and discordant forces of the world ; a weight 
upon its loftier ambitions ; a brake upon the 
wheels of human development; a fetter binding 
both himself and others to the sordid and the 
low. No sunlight sparkles in his eye ; no beams 
of joy irradiate his countenance ; no blessed and 
refreshing ozone breathes in the atmosphere 



2l6 BASAL TRUTHS. 



which environs him ; no thrill of holy feeling 
passes from his heart to the hearts of those with 
whom, he has to do. Like a cloud upon the 
mountain's brow, he is a menace and a darkness 
to all by whom his influence is felt. Narrow 
and self-centred, he is worse than worthless to 
an}' circle of associates among whom his lot in 
life may happen to be cast. 

Having no time at our disposal for further 
words of introduction, we plunge at once into 
the depths of this great theme, by declaring 
that love is the deepest, profoundest, and most 
pow^erful emotion which ever thrills the human 
heart. It is like the fire which fell upon Elijah's 
altar ; burning up not only the sacrifice provided, 
but consuming the altar itself, and even licking 
up the water which filled the trenches that 
Elijah's faith had dug. It is an all-absorbing, 
and an all-consuming passion, regnant, and tri- 
umphant over all besides. 

Some mien speak of the love of God as though 
it were but an easy good-nature at the most; 



LOVE. 



217 



and of human love as if it were just a mere com- 
mon-place sentiment, and nothing more. But 
love is more than sympathy, and more than 
sentiment, and more than both combined. Love, 
whether human or divine, is a principle of action ; 
a working force which influences all with which 
it comes into contact. It is sympathy, we grant 
you ; but it is sympathy at work. We admit 
that love is sentiment ; but it is sentiment re- 
duced to deeds. 

Sentiment grieves over the world^s ills and 
sorrows ; but love pours into the world's wounds 
its fragrant spices and its healing balms. Sym- 
pathy responds to the voice of the world's 
need ; but its fires soon burn to ashes, unless 
constantly renewed with the fuel of a pure and 
fervent love. 

Religiously considered, our theme is broader 
still. The truths of the gospel, when received 
by the power of faith into the regenerate heart, 
are wonderfully suited to awaken and increase 
in us a love of the divine perfections, especially 



2lS BASAL TRUTHS. 



as we behold them in the person of Jesus 
Christ. Contemplating these, the soul begins 
to be athirst for God; and in proportion to the 
prevalence of this holy affection, all inferior 
objects lose their attractiveness, all other jo}*s 
become insipid, and all other loves subordinate. 
Love to God becomes the supreme affection; 
and out of this grows the truest form, and the 
largest measure, of love to man. 

The gospel revelations aim directly at the 
enlargement of the heart, in love of the divine, 
and in good-will for the human. They labor to 
soften us into com^passion, to subdue our envy, 
our enmity, and our resentment; and to en- 
kindle within us ardent desires after the present 
and future happiness of our fellow-men. They 
seek to bind us both to God and to each other; 
and to engender in us a pure and holy affection 
which shall be the earnest of our hope, and the 
source of our joy, the medium of our holiness, 
and the condition of our admission to the man- 
sions of the blest. 



LOVE. 



219 



But a genuine and all-controlling love does 
more than this. It transmutes the human into 
the divine. It stands at the very basis of our 
likeness to God ; and our likeness to God forms 
the measure of our knowledge of God, and of 
our power to do his will. 

All these great principles are closely con- 
nected with each other ; they are links in a 
single chain ; for God reveals himself to men, 
largely through those elements in themselves 
which correspond most closely with his own 
nature ; so that the more we are like God, the 
better we know him; and the better we know 
him, the larger will be the measure of our love. 

We therefore repeat, for the sake of emphasis, 
that love exerts upon us a transforming, or 
assimilating influence. In other words, we grow 
into the likeness of that upon which our heart 
IS set. If we love the world, we are apt to grow 
more worldly. If we love the things of heaven, 
we grow more heavenly-minded. We learn that 
the very countenance of Moses, when he came 



220 BASAL TRUTHS. 



down from the mount, beamed with the divine 
glory; for God had drawn near to him, and 
filled him with himself And as the heart 
communes with God to-day, it learns to love 
him ; and, as it loves, it is changed into his 
likeness ; becomes a mirror which images the 
God who dwells within; for ''he that dwelleth 
in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." 

The standard by which true love is to be 
measured, even on its human side, is set forth 
in such unmistakable terms, that no argument 
is needed for its elucidation. We are to love 
others '' as we love ourselves ; '' and w^e are also 
to love them '* as Jesus has loved us." 

The latter of these phrases is even easier to 
grasp than is the former. Of course it is not 
easy to put this thought into words ; but then we 
have the power of knowing much more than we 
can tell. His love to us was beyond the power 
of description, and it was purely disinterested 
and unsought. But he has crowded it upon 
us until we are shut in by its manifestations on 



LOVE. 221 

every side. It envelops us like an atmosphere. 
It is to us as life and breath. It is all-including, 
and all-powerful ; and yet, to love as he loved, 
that is the standard of the New Testament; 
this is the mark at which even our human love 
must aim. 

It is not asked, nor is it expected, that our 
love shall be equal in quantity with that which 
reaches us from God ; but it may and must be 
±he same in kind. You cannot gather up the 
waters of the ocean ; but you may taste their 
saltness in the spray which flies from every 
crested wave. You cannot grasp the infinitude 
of the divine love ; but you may demonstrate its 
quality and character, in some deed of kindness 
to the unfortunate about you, or in some loving 
service rendered to one that is weaker than 
yourself. 

Even so small a thing as a dew-drop may 
hold within itself a perfect reflection of the sun. 
True, the reflection is not the sun; but it is 
better than total darkness after all. And so we 



222 BASAL TRUTHS. 



say, Blessed is that man who Hves even upon 
the margin of love's boundless ocean; blessed 
is that man, the tear-drops of whose pity for his 
fellows are illumined with the glowing radiance 
of the '' love which dwells in God." 

The strength and crown of love is piety. An 
inward realization of the great truth that '* God 
is love," nourishes and sustains that love to 
God and man for which we plead ; while a spirit 
of worldliness starves this holy principle, an 
leads the soul downward to those lower levels o 
selfishness in which our nobler parts have neither 
room for growth nor facilities for action. 

As love's greatest joy is perfect union with 
that upon which it is set, it follows, as a matter 
of course, that only as the soul looks upward, 
only as the heart reaches out after the things 
above, can there be any real and permanent ele- 
vation in the tone and character of the life. 

Love is a pure, holy, and divine thing ; and 
must not be confounded with those mere por- 
traitures, or more properly speaking, those mere 



h 



LOVE. 223 

caricatures, by which it is so often represented 
in modern writings of a certain class. 

Such specimens of human character as appear 
at times on the pages of the modern low-class 
novel, could not really love, even if they so 
desired ; for they have parted with the last 
vestige of honor, and honor is the very soul 
of love. Such a principle as we are now en- 
deavoring to describe could not seek its own 
gratification at the cost of another's grief or 
shame. But human love, like human nature, is, 
with many, a fallen thing; and much of the love 
of the modern low-class novel is a love fallen 
to the level of mere passion, and bordering 
closely on the shaded fields of lust. But the 
purer and holier love which is born of piety, 
acts upon human nature as gently, as silently, 
as forcefully, and at the same time, as bene- 
ficially, as the sunlight on the flower. 

The outblossomings of beauty which adorn 
many of the lives about us, can be clearly traced 
to the clear shining of God's love-lights on the 



224 BASAL TRUTHS. 



life within. The divine love, shed abroad in the 
heart, is the foundation of all true patriotism, 
philanthropy, and even generosity. Never forget 
that the man who uttered the oft-quoted w^ords, 
'' Am I my brother's keeper?" was a miserable 
and dejected murderer. And never forget that 
the parable of the good Samaritan was spoken 
by him who had attained the loftiest point of 
human virtue and perfection which our world 
has ever yet been privileged to see. 

It is when the human heart beats in unison 
with the great heart of God, that love shines 
forth resplendent in us ; shines at its brightest 
and its best. It is when the soul is moved by 
the exalted and exalting principles of religion, 
that this holy affection is most deep and 
true. It is when we stand before the cross of 
Calvary, that richest and fullest manifestation of 
the good-will of our Father in the heavens, that 
we see, in the men about us, a band of brothers. 
For the welfare of these brothers we are bound 
to labor and to pray, if we would fulfil our own 



LOVE. 



225 



high destiny, and accompHsh the full measure 
of our work for the redemption of the race. 

One of the greatest questions in the religious 
world of to-day, and one which causes the 
thoughtful Christian pastor more anxiety than 
all other questions combined, is, How to awaken 
the drowsy interests of the church, and to bring 
its members up to the best that is in them, for 
the furtherance of the work of Jesus Christ their 
Lord? And, for myself, I have reached this 
conclusion, that in order to awaken interest, you 
must first awaken love. 

To start men forward in the work which tlie 
church demands, and to keep them ever moving 
onward with the steadiness of the stars in their 
orbits, there must be a love-force implanted 
within them, as unvarying as the gravitation- 
force which holds and moves the spheres. Or 
to change the figure. The love which underlies 
all successful Christian work, must be like the 
tides of the mighty ocean, great enough in 
its quantity, and strong enough in its rise and 

15 



226 BASAL TRUTHS. 

swell, to cover every rock of difficulty, to bury 
every obstacle and hindrance in its own bosom, 
and to reach outward and onward until the 
stranded vessels of human life and character 
which now line the beach, shall again be floated, 
and made ready to sail out laden with precious 
cargoes of help for others, akin to that which 
has been brought to them. 

The labor which is to surmount all obstacles ; 
which is to be firm and patient in the midst 
of opposition; which is to work on when no 
trumpet is sounded before it, and where no 
plaudits of our fellows can be heard ; must be, 
and can only be, a labor which is born of love. 

One very important thought w^e can touch but 
briefly ; and yet w^e cannot aff'ord to ignore it 
altogether. For the sake of brevity, we may 
state it thus: In all such studies as the present, 
we must be careful to distinguish, even in our 
own minds, between Christian love, and mere 
natural compassion. 

There is a tenderness which is an instinct of 



LOVE. 



227 



our nature, and which all men possess, in a 
greater or less degree. Indeed, it is common 
alike to man and beast ; but, on the plane on 
which we are now thinking, you will readily see 
that it is not worthy to be dignified with the 
holy name of love. 

Instinct gives us an impulse in the right direc- 
tion ; but in love, there is to be discerned the 
action of the reason and the conscience ; and 
we are influenced by a sense of responsibility. 
Instinctive compassion is but a human force at 
best, while love is a divine thing, as we have 
already seen. Natural compassion deals with 
man solely on the human side, and seeks to 
relieve his needs by human methods; but the 
greatest of his needs are those which reach out 
beyond the human sphere; and which cannot be 
met and answered by any power which is not in 
itself divine. The great strength of love lies in 
the fact that it regards man as a divine being, 
capable of knowing and enjoying the very nature 
and the very happiness which dwell in him from 



228 BASAL TRUTHS. 



whose hand he came, and into whose presence 
he returns ; and the greatest of the problems 
to be solved by love is the raising of man to 
his exalted destiny. 

Returning again for a moment to the love 
w^hich God bears to us as his adopted children, 
we desire to say that this sublime revelation 
utterly contradicts and overturns those views of 
the Divine Being, in which he has so frequently 
been set forth, both by philosophers and theo- 
logians, as stern, relentless, and immovable; 
and as governed solely by the cold and rigid 
requirements of an unbending law. 

Love implies feeling, and feeling of the warm- 
est and most tender kind. If there be no feel- 
ing in God, then we do not hesitate to assert 
that there can be no love in him. If he is not 
touched, and moved, and influenced by human 
sorrow and need ; then it is useless to talk of 
his compassion, and it is foolish to suppose that 
we can receive from him such consideration as 
the Bible leads us to expect. 



LOVE. 229 

To ascribe goodness to him in a general way, 
and yet deny its presence and its action in the 
thousandfold events which make up daily life, 
is to destroy the rational and essential meaning 
of the statement that '' God is love/' That 
form of teaching which declares that because he 
is the great and holy Ruler of a universe which 
he has placed definitely and absolutely under 
the control of law, therefore it is not possible 
for him to vary from his plans, or consider our 
wants in any but a most general way ; is fatal 
to all hope, destructive of all faith, and renders 
useless all approaches to God in prayer. 

True, God has a mind, an all-controlling mind; 
and a will, to which every other will must bow. 
These things it were folly to deny, or to endeavor 
to set aside. But God has also a hearty a heart 
of tenderness and gentleness ; and the least of 
our troubles is not too small for his notice, or 
too insignificant to claim his most attentive care. 
If it be true that '' not a sparrow falls to the 
ground without his notice," then reason suggests 



230 BASAL TRUTHS. 

the question which was asked in this connection 
long years ago, ** Are not ye much better than 
they?" You may therefore set it down as be- 
yond dispute, that any god who is devoid of 
love is not the true God; just as you would 
decide that any man devoid of love was not, in 
the noblest and highest sense, a true man. 

Whether we rise up or lie down ; whether we 
go out or come in ; whether we have sickness 
or health ; whether we suffer in adversity, or 
rejoice in the blessings of prosperity ; we may 
feel that he will be with us in all our experi- 
ences, ever regarding us with more than a 
fatherly affection, leading us with more than a 
fatherly wisdom, surrounding us with more 
than a fatherly care. The great and ever-in- 
creasing purpose which runs through all the 
centuries of human history, is the purpose to 
sweeten human experience, to touch the human 
spirit to finer issues, and to make our human 
happiness perfect and complete ; and again we 
declare that such a purpose is a full and unan- 
swerable proof that *' God is love." 



LOVE. 



231 



We are now ready to gather up the scattered 
threads of our discussion, and to think our 
thoughts over again, though in a somewhat 
intenser and more settled form ; and this we 
may do by asking ourselves the question, just 
what are we to understand, in view of the state- 
ments we have made already, by this declara- 
tion that '' He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in 
God, and God in him." 

To this question we make our final answer 
thus. God is the root and centre of all love, 
whether it be filial or paternal, patriotic or 
domestic, human or divine. All comes from 
him, as the stream flows from the spring. 
And while we must admit that his love is 
unfathomable and incomprehensible ; yet its 
manifestations are all about us, visible in all 
we see. It blooms in all the beauty which 
meets the eye; sounds forth in all the com- 
mingling melodies which fall upon the ear ; 
and pulsates in every form of conscious life, 
from the insect to the man. 



232 BASAL TRUTHS. 

All human forms of love blend in the love of 
God, just as the distinctive colors of the rain- 
bow blend in one white ray of sunlight. Every 
manifestation of human tenderness, every at- 
tempt at helpfulness to others, every kindly 
impulse which moves the human heart; all these 
are but the out-flashings of that light which has 
its home and centre in the love-glow which 
surrounds the eternal throne. 

Therefore, to ''dwell in love" must be to 
''dwell in God; for God is love ;" and wherever 
love triumphs, there will God make his abode ; 
bringing in his train all those wondrous gifts of 
love which, when commingled and combined, 
result in the rich blessing of a perfect peace. 



XI. 

HOLINESS. 



" Holiness is religion shining. It is the candle 
lighted, and not hid under a bushel, but lighting the 
house. It is religious principle put into motion. It 
is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the 
feet and with the hands of love to man. It is faith 
gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and 
devotion breathing benedictions on human suffering, 
while it goes up in intercessions to the Father of all 
piety." — BiOiop Huntington, 



XL 



HOLINESS. 



But as he which hath called yoic is holy, so be 
ye holy in all mariner of conversatioji ; because it 
is writteft, Be ye holy, for I am holy} 

It is a fact beyond question that few, if any, 
of the doctrines of our beloved Christianity 
have been so strangely and so persistently 
misinterpreted, and so widely and completely 
misunderstood as the doctrine of Christian Ho- 
liness. By many it is regarded as a mere theory, 
beautiful and desirable in the highest degree, 
but visionary, and by no means practical in its 
relation to the issues and events of daily life. 
By others it is regarded as a practical question 
only; as a rule of life rather than a problem in 

i I Peter i. 15-16. 



2-^6 BASAL TRUTHS. 



ethics; a standard of conduct which may and 
must be reahzed by all who would be known as 
followers of Jesus Christ. 

These divergent opinions as to the nature of 
holiness have led, naturally and necessarily, to 
equally divergent professions as to its practice; 
and hence, we need not be greatly surprised at 
any of the strange phenomena which have be- 
come almost common in this connection. 

One class of men regard the highest manifes- 
tations of holiness as consisting in such a know- 
ledge of our weak and feeble moral constitution 
as shall drive us to a complete and constant re- 
liance upon God for strength to do the right; 
and another class of men declare that they have 
been so completely cleansed by the ** washing 
of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy 
Ghost," as to have lost all relish for wrong- 
doing, and not only to be living in absolute 
freedom from sin, but even in freedom from 
temptation to sin. 

True, the practice of many of this latter class 



HOLINESS. 



237 



grossly belies their profession, but that such 
claims are made by men calling themselves 
Christians, some of us know but too well ; and 
hence it will readily be seen that the topic to be 
considered needs to be handled with the most 
consummate delicacy and care; and it is in a 
careful and a reverent spirit that we would now 
turn to its further study. 

That holiness is to be considered as a matter 
of actual practice, and not of mere theory, may 
be gathered from a right understanding of our 
present text; for the word " conversation" must 
be regarded as possessing its older meaning of 
life or '* conduct." 

It is only during the last century and a half 
that this word has settled down into a mere 
synonym for talking. Indeed, Swift is the first 
writer of any note to use it in this latter sense; 
and '' conduct " would be a much better word 
to use in this place, because, as the context 
shows, it conveys to the reader's mind a truer 
picture of the writer's thought. 



BASAL TRUTHS. 



We have previously seen how greatly the 
relations and prospects of men are changed by 
their adoption into the family of God ; but we 
are now to see that a change equally great and 
important is wrought in their moral tastes and 
tendencies ; or as Peter puts it, '* in the spirit of 
their mind." In becoming children of God 
they are also to become '' children of obedi- 
ence," and they are to bear the lineaments of 
the new family to which they now belong. 
Whereas their former aim had been simply to 
please themselves, now their daily and hourly 
study must be, how they may so walk as that 
their conduct may be pleasing to God, and their 
whole life-service be acceptable in his sight. 

It is intimated in the Gospels that in the work 
which God has wrought for us, we ought to find 
a constraining motive to aim at being what he 
wishes us to be; and, on closer inquiry, we find 
that he desires that we shall be just what he is 
himself. That is to say, our holiness must, in 
so far as the limitations of our created nature 



HOLINESS. 239 



will allow, accord with the holiness which we 
behold in him. 

The holiness of God sheds beauty on every 
other attribute of his nature. It blends and 
mingles with his justice, his goodness, and his 
truth. It illumines all his thoughts and pur- 
poses, shines on all his works and ways, and 
reveals that sublime rectitude which, more than 
all besides, contributes to make him God. 

Something akin to this is here demanded of 
us as believers. We are to possess a holiness 
similar in character to that which appears in 
him. In every movement of the heart and life, 
in public and in private, in the family and in 
the church, in the secular affairs of life, as in 
those considered to be more sacred, we are to 
be ruled by the principles of right which are 
apparent in his doings; and this, and nothing 
short of this, is holiness. 

We may now more briefly define holiness to 
be conformity to the divine nature and will. It 
is more than we usually mean by religion. It is 



240 BASAL TRUTHS. 

religion shining in the hght which gave it birth. 
It is religion hard at work for God and men. 
'' It is right, doing right, for the sake of right." 
It is devotion breathing benedictions on the 
needy and the weak, and seeking thus to glorify 
God by the gladdening of men. 

Some such thought as this must have been in 
the mind of J. G. Holland, when he so beauti- 
fully said, — 

" I count this to be grandly true, 
That a noble deed is a step toward God ! 
Lifting the soul from the common sod, 
To purer air, and a broader view. 

" We rise by things that are 'neath our feet, 
By what we have mastered of good and gain ; 
By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that w^e hourly meet." 

We repeat, then, that holiness is conformity 
to the divine nature and will; but we add that 
this conformity is to be wrought out by us in 
loving service, as truly as it is to be wrought 
into us by loving grace. And it is folly to 



HOLINESS. 241 



believe that the demand for holiness is in any 
way weakened or impaired by the fulness of the 
gospel provisions for our safety and our peace. 

The idea is still occasionally advanced, that 
because Jesus has made a complete and ample 
satisfaction for our sins, there is absolutely 
nothing left for us to do in the work of the 
soul's salvation. But such an idea is more 
closely akin to ancient paganism than to modern 
Christianity. Holiness of life is as essential to 
salvation, as is the belief of the heart; for it is 
written, " Without holiness no man shall see 
the Lord." 

In the New Testament the '* new creature " is 
frequently referred to as a son of God, seeking 
after likeness to his Father; and all attempts to 
divorce morality from religion, and to build up 
a pure life, or a strong society, on a secular or 
non-religious basis, are foredoomed to failure. 
Not only does our own past experience set itself 
decidedly against all such schemes for the ad- 
vancement of the individual; but past history 

16 



242 BASAL TRUTHS. 

declares that as a nation's religion, so have been 
its morals. National records assure us that the 
ethical standard of a people invariably follows, 
in its rise and fall, the advance or decline of 
religious faith and practice. In the long run, 
creed embodied in daily life is the determinant 
of character, whether in the case of the church, 
the nation, or the man. 

In view of all this, we claim that the demand 
which Christianity makes upon its votaries for 
holiness of life, is as reasonable as it is impor- 
tant. Part of its work is the subjugation of 
the lower and more immoderate passions ; and 
when these are conquered, it becomes possible 
for the reason to enter a wider field, and to take 
a higher station for its contemplation of the 
right and true. 

Being thus liberated from the fetters and 
trammels of the low and the vicious, it rises to 
loftier altitudes and clearer atmospheres, and 
there shines like a crystal sparkling in the bril- 
liant light of a ray direct from the sun. Its 



HOLINESS. 243 



action is both quicker and purer, and its deduc- 
tions are more equitable and just. 

In this respect holiness may be defined as 
right thinking. It is more than reason contem- 
plating the divine things, for it is reason 
harmonizing with the divine things ; and no 
thought-process is really just or trustworthy 
unless it coincides with the best we know of the 
thoughts and purposes of God. But when the 
principles of holiness rule the thought, the 
whole mind becomes a moral Eden, full of lus- 
cious fruits and fragrant flowers. The sanctified 
soul has within itself the gates of the world 
above. Its thoughts are bathed in the light di- 
vine. They take to themselves the wings of the 
cherubim, and enter into the immediate pres- 
ence of the Highest; and the w^hole life grows 
richer in the fuller knowledge of his character 
and life. 

While dealing with this theoretical side of 
the doctrine of holiness, we may well pause to 
think just one thought more, namely, that holi- 
ness is set forth in Scripture as ts. growth. 



244 BASAL TRUTHS. 



When we study the growth of a flower or a 
tree we soon come to the conclusion that they 
grow of themselves, grow from within them- 
selves, grow by the enlargement and develop- 
ment of themselves. But we are apt, in these 
thoughts, to overlook others of equal impor- 
tance. Flower and tree draw largely upon the 
outside world for the vitalizing juices necessary 
to the maintenance of their growth ; and much 
may be done for them by culture and attention, 
or their development may be greatly retarded 
by neglect. 

The regenerated soul grows in holiness by 
the development of the germ of holiness im- 
planted within it by the Holy Spirit, and it 
grows into the likeness of that Spirit. But much 
may be done to hasten or retard the process. 
We may keep the soul in the sunny radiance of 
the divine love, or we may shadow it by coarse 
and careless modes of thought and life ; and 
the result, in either case, will speedily make it- 
self felt and seen. If we live in the light of God 



HOLINESS. 



245 



we shall grow in likeness to God. If the divine 
light be shut away the life will grow darker 
from hour to hour. 

We must therefore walk on daily from pardon 
to pardon ; from purification to purification. 
Yesterday's surrender of self to Christ may not 
suffice us in the presence of to-day's greater 
trial. We must renew our consecration with 
every new development of circumstances which 
may come to us, and must draw our holiness 
from the great fountain of holiness, hour by 
hour, and moment by moment. 

This is sometimes said to be a humiliating 
view of Christian living ; but with that we are 
not concerned. The only inquiry to be made is. 
Is this view of our life true or false? And we 
unhesitatingly affirm that it is certainly safer to 
accept this setting forth of the case than to be 
content with that which proclaims a pardon to 
be appropriated in a moment, for all sins, past, 
present, and to come ; and a holiness which is 
not dependent in any wa)-, or to any degree, 



246 BASAL TRUTHS. 



upon the care we exercise ourselves, or the con- 
stant renewals of the grace which is divine. 

Turning now to the more practical aspects of 
our theme, we would remind you that our world 
has seen but one true and perfect example of 
holiness since time began. '' In the character 
of Jesus, intellectual greatness and moral per- 
fection blend in a divine and ravishing harmony. 
The tenderest sensibility and the calmest judg- 
ment, the keenest feelings and the purest 
thoughts, the loftiest emotions and the most 
godlike deeds, all co-exist in him. His heart 
was the seat of every virtue. His life was the 
personification of purity." The rays of love to 
God, and of compassion for men, which brighten 
the particular incidents of his career, meeting 
and blending into oneness, make the sum-total 
of that perfection which blazes forth in the rich 
lustre of his life considered as a whole; and 
any human character approximates perfection 
in proportion as it approaches his. This is the 
true standard for the measurement of holiness 



HOLINESS. 



247 



on its practical side. This is the one great 
specimen of excellence which must be the rule 
for all 

Do not take exception to this position, on the 
ground that Jesus was divine; for in the sense 
in w^hich we now speak, he was not divine ; or at 
least, we may be permitted to say that he was 
as truly man as he was truly God. The life he 
lived upon the earth was lived upon the human 
plane, and he was subject to the same restric- 
tions and temptations which are common to the 
experience of the race. In every sense he was 
a child ; in every sense he was a youth ; in every 
sense he was a man ; and with the physical 
growth which this statement implies, came men- 
tal development; and with mental development 
came the increase of spiritual life and power. 

Study his earthly career with care, and you 
will have no difficulty in perceiving that there 
was a continual inflowing into his heart of the 
spiritual and the heavenly ; and a corresponding 
enlargement of his consciousness, first, of the 



248 BASAL TRUTHS. 



divine things, and then of his divine mission; 
for even his consciousness developed gradually 
and in perfect accordance with the laws of hu- 
man life; and in this fact, if you will accept it, 
you will find one of the strongest proofs of his 
true and proper humanity which thought can 
furnish or conceive. 

But unfortunately the divine mission of Jesus, 
in his great atoning sacrifice, has been so 
crowded into prominence as to press the glories 
of his human character and the power of his 
human example so far into the background that 
they have long been in danger of being lost to 
human view. But coming years will more and 
more give point and prominence to this human 
side of our Saviour's life and work; and human- 
ity will be the gainer by this course. 

We repeat, then, that great as was the impor- 
tance of the death of Christ to the spiritual 
interests of mankind, that of his life was scarcely 
less so. His three and thirty years of active 
benevolence, childlike humility, and patient en- 



HOLINESS. 



249 



durance, make up a life which was intended as 
much to be a Hght to future generations, a silent 
modeller of human conduct, as the sacrifice of 
his death was intended to satisfy the claims of 
divine justice, and to bear witness to the solemn 
truth that God will make no compromise with 
sin. 

To forget this is to belittle him, and to defraud 
ourselves. It is to hide away the beauties and 
the inspirations which this great model is in- 
tended to supply, and to leave that portion of 
his career which we might most easily compre- 
hend, with its lessons all unlearned, and its in- 
fluences all unfelt. 

Looking at this Christ-life in its detail, we 
find how beautifully complete it is. What sweet- 
ness we behold in his character, what purity in 
his teachings, what gentleness in his dealings 
with others. How meekly he carries himself 
under the unmerited insults of those who do 
not, and will not, understand him. How ten- 
derly considerate he is of those who have fallen, 



250 BASAL TRUTHS. 



under the pressure of temptation, into the power 
of sin. How pitiful to the needy and the suffer- 
ing. How consoling to the heart-weary and the 
sad. How there stand combined in him all 
those excellencies which have adorned and 
beautified the lives of the greatest spirits of 
our race. 

Now these beauteous elements which shine 
so brightly in the character of Jesus, are just the 
elements of which our holiness must be com- 
posed. He stands forth as the model and ex- 
ample of what God desires that every human 
life should be. The haloes of glory which play 
about his words and deeds, will become more 
and more visible in ours, as we grow in holiness, 
and bring our lives nearer to the standard which 
he furnishes; for holiness is the reproduction, 
in the character of his followers, of the graces 
which thus shine forth in him. 

It now remains for us to consider, as briefly 
as possible, the means by which this blessing is 
to be attained ; and here again the example of 



HOLINESS. 



251 



the Master is priceless in value, and yet easy to 
grasp and comprehend. We must grow in holi- 
ness as he grew ; and we must do this by the 
methods which he employed ; and the study of 
these methods may be condensed, for our pres- 
ent purpose, into a brief setting forth of three 
simple statements. 

I. Jesus was emphatically a man of prayer. 
Speaking still from the human point of view, we 
may say out roundly that he does not even 
profess to conquer the forces of evil in his own 
strength ; but he ever keeps wide open those 
channels through which divine strength may be 
poured in upon him, and the wisdom and grace 
of God may be made manifest in his hours of 
need. 

No life more fully realizes the truthfulness of 
the statement that the paths of religion are the 
paths of peace than does that of our blessed 
Lord. But in his life we are also led to see that 
the}^ are steep paths, calling for a constant out- 
put of toil and effort on the part of all who 



252 BASAL TRUTHS. 



would walk therein. The road which leads into 
the heavenly kingdom is built upon an inclined 
plane ; and a very good name for that plane 
would be '' holiness of life/' 

Men obtain forgiveness as a gift; but holiness 
is a thing to be achieved. The fact that God is 
declared to be a God of love, does not mean 
that he is so anxious for our future welfare as 
to be careless of our present conduct; but it 
means that he so loves us as to be willing to aid 
in securing our future welfare by and through 
our present conduct. 

Realizing this, Jesus called often upon the 
Father, both for himself and for his follow- 
ers ; and a study of such of his prayers as 
have come down to us, will show that he prayed 
more for the gifts which belong to holy living, 
than for the blessings of the coming heaven. 
For his disciples, his prayers reach a climax in 
the request, '' I pray not that Thou shouldest 
take them out of the world, but that Thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil." And in 



HOLINESS. 



253 



regard to himself, his petitions culminate in the 
cry, '' If it be possible, let this cup pass from 
me; " and the grace and strength of his matured 
character shine brightest in the words which 
follow, ** Nevertheless, not my will but thine 
be done." 

Holiness being a growth in the divine, it fol- 
lows that prayer is peculiarly appropriate in 
any effort we may make for its attainment ; and 
he who is the God of holiness will answer no 
petitions more readily than those in which we 
cry for likeness to himself. 

II. Jesus was also a profound student of the 
Divine Word. The aptness of his quotations, 
in the several controversies in which he became 
involved, and the readiness with which he uses 
Scripture in his conflicts with our common foe, 
prove this without further argument. 

In the written word we have the fullest direc- 
tions for the attainment of this grace, and the 
truest delineations of its character and power; 
and hence the necessity of a familiar acquaint- 



254 BASAL TRUTHS. 

ance with its teachings, in order to a rapid 
growth in grace. Indeed, the hghts which gleam 
on the pages of Holy Writ can alone reveal the 
upward paths which lead to perfectness of char- 
acter, and the holiness which is of God. 

III. Jesus ever walked circumspectly before 
God and men. See him where you may, and 
as you may, you will find him with his face 
turned heavenward, and his thoughts rising to 
the things above. To his view, present and fu- 
ture were parts of a common whole; and holi- 
ness of life was the passport to all that was best 
in both. 

Following in his footsteps, we shall not merely 
find our way into the home which he has gone 
to prepare for us, but into that likeness to him- 
self by which our admission to the heavenly 
mansions is to be secured; and /;/ which our 
enjoyment of heaven will find its fullest con- 
summation and its highest joy. 



I 



XII. 
HEAVEN. 



"All our meditations on, and descriptions of, 
heaven want balance, and are, so to speak, pictures 
ill composed. We first build up our glorified human 
nature by such hints as are furnished us in Scripture ; 
we place it in an abode worthy of it ; and then after all 
we give it an unending existence with nothing to 
do," — Dean Alford. 



XII. 



HEAVEN. 



For our citizenship is in heaven} 

Every human being born into this present 
world, and Hving long enough to attain to 
mature and independent thought, dreams the 
great dream of immortality; and looks onward 
beyond the limits of the life he now knows, 
firm in the belief that there is a something more 
to come. Our conceptions of the nature of that 
coming something may differ widely as the 
poles ; but the expectation of, and the longing 
after, a fuller and more satisfying life than that 
we now live, is common to men the world 
over. 

1 Philippians iii. 20. 
17 



2S8 BASAL TRUTHS. 



This universal longing after immortality of 
being comes largely from within. It is born of 
the lingering echoes of that promise which God 
whispered into the hearts of our first parents in 
Eden ; for heaven was as truly in sight of Eden, 
as it is in sight of the riper thought of these 
later years. The echoing of the promise keeps 
alive the sense of want in man ; and he still 
pines after that unobtained something; though 
he scarcely knows what it is he longs for, or 
why these inward cravings will not down. 

Upon this problem of the nature of the life 
to come, human thought has labored most in- 
cessantly; expending its noblest energies, and 
rising to its loftiest altitudes, in ceaseless en- 
deavors to grapple with and comprehend the 
thousand mysteries by which it is still sur- 
rounded. But the results of human thinking 
have been as widely divergent as the character 
of the individual minds employed ; and the 
progress made by human thought may be 
correctly registered by a consideration of its 



HEAVEN. 



259 



methods of dealing with this question at the 
present, as compared with those which have 
prevailed in the ages past and gone. 

The intensity of our thought upon such a 
theme is not to be wondered at. The very 
word ''heaven " has about it a breath of mystery. 
It carries with it suggestions of beauty and of 
grandeur, which have engrained themselves into 
the very make-up of the word itself; so that it 
moves us as no other word can do. As we 
speak it, we instinctively lift up our heads and 
our hearts, and pride and gratitude become 
strangely intermingled with the thought of our 
future home. We even look into the depths of 
the golden sunset, and imagine that we see, in 
its royal colorings, somewhat of the mystic 
splendors which lie still further on. 

But if we content ourselves with such thoughts 
of heaven as are thus suggested, we shall fall 
into a grievous error which is sadly too common 
already, and which has done, and is still doing 
more to mislead and mystify the minds of men, 



260 BASAL TRUTHS. 



in this particular, than it is in the power of 
human language to express. 

If you will carefully examine the religious 
writings which have come dowm to us from the 
past, you will not be long in discovering that 
the heaven our fathers saw was too largely 
material to satisfy the highest longings and 
desires of a spiritual being such as man. 

Taking the sublime utterances of Jesus, and 
the splendid imagery of his apostles, in too 
literal a sense ; and being over anxious in regard 
to the nature, and even the location of our 
future home; these godly men have narrowed, 
rather than broadened, and have lowered, rather 
than heightened, our view^s and conceptions of 
the glory of that after-life for which we look 
and wait. 

Realizing that it is absolutely impossible for 
a finite mind to grasp and understand the in- 
finite, the wTiters of the New Testament, acting 
under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have 
striven to convey to us some faint idea of the 



HEAVEN. 261 



grandeur of heaven, and the beauties of the 
heavenly hfe, by the use of a series of figures 
and illustrations gathered from the material 
realm. To use these as they used them is both 
legitimate and helpful ; but to endeavor to 
transform these emblems into actual descrip- 
tions of the world to come, is both illegitimate 
and disastrous. 

Here, for instance, is a description of heaven 
such as we now refer to, taken from the writ- 
ings of one who figured as a leader of religious 
thought in the last generation ; and, compared 
with many which might be cited, it is moderate 
in the extreme. 

" Man is ever striving to better his condition. 
Well ! heaven is a better country. It is a land 
of blessed and perpetual spring ; and its fields 
and gardens yield all things which can contrib- 
ute to the happiness of the saints. Man loves 
good fare ; and there he shall eat of angel's 
food, and regale himself with heavenly manna. 
Man loves good health. There his health shall 



262 BASAL TRUTHS 



be undeca\'iDg, his vigor immortal, his youth 
eternal. ]\Ian loves pure air and country scenes ; 
and the atmosphere of that country is perpet- 
ually serene, and its prospects are unbounded. 
An undeclining sun, and an everlasting day 
shall rise upon it, and night shall never draw her 
sable curtains over those celestial abodes. Man 
loves greatness ; and heaven's inhabitants are 
crowned kings. They are triumphant conquer- 
ors, who spend their eternity in waving the 
palm-branches of their victory. ]\Ian loves 
music ; and in heaven they are engaged in 
making music upon harps of gold to the Lord 
God Almighty; constantly losing themselves in 
the ecstasies of melody. ]\Ian loves beauty; 
and there the walls are of jasper, the city itself 
is pure gold, like unto clear glass; its founda- 
tions are formed of all manner of precious 
stones ; and each of its twelve gates is made 
from a single pearl. Indeed, every sense will 
find its special gratification; and this it is which 
makes it heaven." 



HEAVEN. 263 



Again we assert that such a use of the beau- 
tiful symbols of Scripture is both illegitimate 
and disastrous. It reduces the heaven of the 
believer to a merely material and sensuous par- 
adise ; and carries us backward into those deep 
vales of ignorance which border on the pagan- 
ism and heathenism of the darkest ages earth 
has known. 

The ancient Greeks had their Elysian fields, 
where the shadowy forms of their loved ones 
moved amid scenes superior to those which 
they had known on earth. Their wondrous 
pictures of the Islands of the Blest, where 
'^ Achilles and Tydides unlaced the helmets 
from their flowing hair," are scarcely inferior to 
the view of the Christian heaven furnished by 
this modern divine. 

One of our poets has said of the American 

Indian, that — 

" To be content 's his natural desire, 
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire, 
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company ; " 



264 BASAL TRUTHS. 

and if heaven be only a place of material happi- 
ness and sensual enjo\-ment, we fail to see why 
the Indian's dream should not be realized. 

Surely the great wealth of Bible imagery 
must mean more than this 1 Surely there must 
be some better interpretation to be put upon 
the closing chapters of Revelation, than that we 
shall spend eternity in loitering through lovely 
river-glades, basking in golden sunlight, living 
on a fruit diet, boasting of our great past, and 
perfecting ourselves in the arts of music and 
luxurious ease I Such a heaven could never 
satisfy the demands of an immortal spirit ; for 
it is beneath the dignity of the best that is in 
us here and now. We must therefore look 
higher, and seek for some truer and diviner 
conception of the jo\'s which are to follow when 
the present life is done. 

As we turn now to the more positive aspects 
of our stud}', we are met b\' the statement that 
" e}'e hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the things which 



HEAVEN. 265 



God hath prepared for them that love him ; but 
God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." 
These words have a twofold influence upon our 
thought ; first, to restrain us from rashness and 
carelessness ; and second, to teach us that any 
reliable and satisfactory view of heaven must 
be, and can only be gained by lifting our 
thought out of the material, and into the spirit- 
ual plane. This, in itself, is by no means an 
easy task ; and yet we must attempt it if we 
would still go forward. 

We therefore proceed to say that, when ex- 
amined closely, and from a spiritual viewpoint, 
all the wondrous lights of Scripture imagery 
will be found to gather about, and to focalize 
themselves upon, a few central ideas which are 
well within the grasp of our present powers. 
Our own thought is so nearly expressed in the 
following paragraph, that we insert it without 
change. 

^^ Translated into their simplest meanings, by the 
aid of such Scriptural knowledge as we now possess, 



266 BASAL TRUTHS. 

the white robes and the pahii-branches become the 
emblems of a spotless purity, and of the victory over 
self and sin. The walls of jasper, and the streets of 
gold ; the lovely scenery, and the heavenly manna, 
and the ringing harps : these are the symbols of that 
higher happiness which purity ever brings into the 
soul of its possessor. The perennial fruitage of the 
tree of life, and the unceasing flow of the river of the 
water of life, together with the solid foundations of 
sapphire and emerald and chalcedony ; indicate the 
permanent and abiding nature of this blessedness. 
The ever-increasing character of heaven's joy, as pre- 
figured in the ever-swelHng anthems of the blest, 
points to the ever-growing development and expan- 
sion of our powers. And the throne of the Eternal, 
standing central to all the rest, teaches that heaven's 
supremest good consists ni the perfect revelation of 
him who sits thereon; in the establishment of a full, 
close, and intimate intercourse and fellowship, be- 
tween the Christian and his God." 

Now let us for a moment retrace our steps, in 
order that we may^ see what it is that we have 
said. -Practically, we have said just this; that 
the joys of the heaven-life are spiritual in their 
character ; such as we might expect them to be 



HEAVEN. 



267 



in view of the fact that man is primarily a 
spiritual being. And we have further said, that, 
as we understand the teachings of the symbol- 
ism of Scripture, these spiritual forms of good 
may be grouped about the ideas which stand 
connected with the following words ; Purity, 
Happiness, Permanence, Perfection, and God. 

For the present these five points must suffice 
us ; although they might easily be multiplied by 
fifty, and still fail to open up our theme in its 
fulness, or bring all of heaven wathin the circle 
of our thought. But, nevertheless, we contend 
that the joys represented by these five words do 
make a real heaven ; such a heaven as satisfies 
our inmost longings, and gives us comfort in our 
thoughts of the '' loved ones gone before." We 
therefore proceed to consider them a little more 
in detail, in the hope that our thought may 
impress itself more deeply upon your minds, 
and that the coming heaven may be, henceforth, 
less shadowy and indistinct. 

It would be foolish for us to sav, as some 



263 BASAL TRUTHS. 



have done, that heaven is not a place, but it is 
only a state or condition ; because, hke others, 
we really know but little about it. Certainly 
the indications of the Scriptures are such as to 
lead us to think that there is an actual abode 
into which the righteous enter, that they may 
find their rest. But heaven is both place and 
state. In so far as it is a place, it is a place 
where sin is not ; but where the earth-stains 
shall have been purged awa\', and the dross of 
human nature taken from its gold. 

Heaven without purity is an unthinkable 
thought. Even earth would be heaven if man 
could possess again the innocence of his child- 
hood ; and the race be perfectly honest, true, 
noble, sincere, affectionate, and holy to the 
heart's core. To be set free, and then to be for 
ever kept free, from the galling yoke of sinful 
habit, and from the terrific weights of tempta- 
tion ; to be, and only desire to be, to do, and only 
desire to do, that which is perfectly right and 
pure ; this would make a heaven of an\' place. 



HEAVEN. 269 



But without this, no place, however beautiful in 
all other respects, could be a heaven for man. 

In a word; there must be a glory within us, 
corresponding to the glory without ; and the 
state of the life^ and the environment in which 
it moves, must be harmonized perfectly and 
completely, before our happiness can be perfect 
and complete. A city of sins and shortcomings 
must, in the very nature of the case, be a city of 
griefs and graves. Hence we say, that it is not 
a mere change of place, not walls of gems, and 
gates of pearl; not purling streams and sunlit 
vistas, that will make our heaven ; but the 
absence of the disturbing forces which have 
changed our present world from a lovely para- 
dise to a dreary wilderness ; and the presence 
of those restorative principles or forces which 
are already bringing back some portions of our 
earth to their original loveliness ; and stamping 
on some human hearts again, the long lost 
image of our God. 

Still using the word '^ place " as an aid to our 



270 BASAL TRUTHS. 



present imperfect modes of thought, our second 
point is, that heaven is a place of perfect 
happiness. 

This second thought we have already opened 
in part, in our study of the first ; for if we are to 
look at our theme from a spiritual view^point, 
then purity and happiness become synonyms, — 
different names for one and the same thing. 

We need only add, therefore, that, sin being 
the basal factor in all the disorder and unhappi- 
ness which man has ever known, the removal 
of this principle means the restoration of man's 
peace. But out of this thought arises another; 
namely, that perfect rest, as w^e understand the 
term, is not necessarily perfect happiness ; for 
man is formed for service, and the mere absence 
of anxiety and care, of suffering and tears, can- 
not afford him happiness of itself To sit upon 
a cloud, and sing unending psalms, cannot be 
to man a heaven. 

We know but little of the nature of heaven's 
employments; just as the child at play knows 



HEAVEN. 271 



but little of the employments of the full-grown 
man. We may weave to ourselves wondrous 
representations of the heavenly life only to 
find at last, that the warp and woof of our 
gorgeous tapestries is but a gorgeous mist. 

But this we may say with certainty. The 
holy ministries of the new and higher life will 
be in perfect accord with our new and higher 
nature ; and that much of the heavenly music 
will arise from the perfect harmonizing of the 
soul with its environment; and much of its 
happiness from the perfect adaptation of the 
service required, to the endowments we shall 
then possess. Of this w^e may be fully assured ; 
that in the absence of the ills which now harass 
and restrict us, and in the presence of those 
forms of good which will meet the requirements 
of our reorganized being, our happiness will be 
absolutely perfect, and this feature of our heaven 
will be all we could desire. 

On the necessity of permanence, as an ele- 
ment in our coming good, it scarcely seems 



272 BASAL TRUTHS. 



needful that we should dwell at any length. If 
amid the beauties of that sublime purity to 
which we have referred, there lurked even the 
possibility of the renewal of the power and 
dominion of sin ; if amid heaven^s supernal bliss 
there lay concealed any such element as could 
reinvest us with the miseries of pain and woe ; 
the deep black shadows of such an element or 
possibility, falling athwart the resplendent glories 
which are promised to the redeemed, would 
destroy all the brightness, and chill all the 
warmth and gladness of that holy place, and 
implant within our souls a dread foreboding 
which, in itself, would turn our heaven into a 
hell. 

Here upon earth, man is a pilgrim; but in 
heaven he is to have ''citizenship." His jour- 
neyings will end with the crossing of the 
death-stream ; and entering the land which lies 
beyond, he will find it to be 

" A land upon whose blissful shores 
There rests no shadow, falls no storm ; " 



HEAVEN. 



273 



I 



and with its sun standing ever on the meridian 
of high noon, our life's day shall know no 
nightfall, and our bliss shall know no end. 

Heaven's endless day shall be a day of prog- 
ress. We have learned some little of the prin- 
ciples of human growth even here. We have 
watched, with thrilling interest, the opening of 
the infant mind, and have witnessed its mar- 
vellous expansions through the bright years 
of youth. The fuller knowledge of manhood's 
riper years has been to most of us a source of 
comfort and of hope ; but the hope has been 
blasted as the strength of the noble mind we 
have been observing has dwindled to the child- 
ishness of age ; and we have been led to feel 
that if the present were our all, then life would 
be but unsatisfactory at best. 

Or we have watched some still greater mind, 
in its grapple with some difficult problem; shap- 
ing, and then carrying forward, a great life-plan ; 
and as we have seen the mighty fabric shattered 
by the touch of death's icy fingers, before it 



274 BASAL TRUTHS. 

could be carried to completion, we have la- 
mented in a bitterness too deep for words, and 
have felt that here man labors but in vain. 

We have striven to picture to ourselves the 
work we might accomplish, and the blessed 
growths we might attain, if only our life were 
longer, and its hindrances removed ; and it is 
no small part of our coming heaven, that it is to 
bring us those fuller opportunities which earth 
so persistently denies us. 

To grow and increase for ever in knowledge 
and in goodness ; to find our powers expanding 
with the ever-expanding cycles of a limitless 
eternity ; this truly is a great thought for the 
little minds we now possess. But even this 
thought we must attempt to think, if we would 
realize the greatness of the life we are to live 
above. But such a thought cannot be put into 
language; and so we leave it for another and 
yet grander conception, with which we feel 
ourselves even more incompetent to deal. 

Heaven is to afford us a complete and perfect 



HEAVEN. 



275 



revelation of our God, As to the nature of this 
revelation, we have nothing now to say; but as 
to its results upon ourselves, much might be 
said if space permitted. But the greatest 
thought of all is, that looking into his face, we 
shall be changed into his likeness ; and this 
thought certainly is too great for words. 

But, in part, it may be considered from the 
same viewpoints we have occupied already. It 
means that our purity shall be the counterpart 
of his ; that our happiness shall partake of the 
same nature as that which he possesses ; that 
our permanence shall run parallel with his ; that 
even our perfection shall be as his ; and that we 
ourselves shall become as God. 

The longings awakened by this and kindred 
thoughts may, perhaps, be partly expressed in 
the words of Richard Baxter: 

" Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet 
Thy blessed face to see ; 
For if thy work on earth be sweet, 
What will thy glory be ? 



276 BASAL TRUTHS. 



" My knowledge of that life is small ; 
The eye of faith is dim ; 
But 't is enough that God knows all, 
And I shall be with him.'' 

Add to these thoughts the blessed associa- 
tions then to be resumed with the lov^ed and lost 
of earth; and the never-ending companionships 
with the noble and the pure ; and, even then, 
there dawns upon us but a very faint concep- 
tion of the great and lovely country in which 
the children of God shall hold citizenship, and 
make their permanent abode. 

The choicest words fail to represent our 
heaven, just as the tenderest words fail to repre- 
sent our God. We shall never be able to touch 
more than the outer edge of this great theme, 
until we pass within the city gates ; but, as we 
do so, we shall know, as no earthly words can 
tell us, the full meaning of the blessed truth, 
that *' Our citizenship is in heaven." 

THE EXD. 



A Short List of Books on the Christian Evidences, 
Church History, and Biblical Subjects, de- 
signed for the use of Private Students, or 
as text=books in Academies and Colleges. 



*:);* Single copies for examination, with a view to introduction as 
text-books^ will be sent by Tnail at half price. Terms for quanti- 
ties will be given on application. 

The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by its His- 
torical Effects. By R. S. Storrs, D.D., LL.D. 8vo, 
cloth, gilt top, $2.50; i2mo, cloth, $2.00 each, net. 

Supernatural Revelation. Lectures on the L. P. Stone Foun- 
dation, delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary. By 
C. M. Mead, Ph.D., D.D. New Edition. Small 8vo, 
Cloth. $1.75. 

The Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early Christianity. 
Lectures delivered on the L. P. Stone Foundation at Prince- 
ton Theological Seminary, in March, 1888. By George T. 
PURVES, D.D. Small 8vo. Cloth. $1.75. 

The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. 
Considered by R. L. Dabney, D.D., LL.D. New and en- 
larged edition. 8vo. Cloth. $2.50. 

Inspiration. What is it ? A Fresh Study of the Question, 
with Discriminative Replies. By John C. DeWitt, D.D., 
late Biblical Professor in Theological Seminary, New Bruns- 
wick. i2mo. Cloth. $1.00. 



Bible Class Text=Books, Preferred by a Committee of 
the Church of Scotland. 

The Old Testament and its Contents. By Professor Rob- 
ertson, D.D., University of Glasgow. i8mo, 30 cents, net. 

The name and fame of the author is a guarantee of excellence. He is a 
constructive^ not a destructive critic, and to the preparation of this manual 
he has brought ripe scholarship and a devout spirit. 

The New Testament and its Writers. By the Rev. J. A. 
McClvmont, D.D. i8mo. 25 cents, net. 

It would be wise for all who conduct Bible or normal classes to adopt this 
for a text-book. Nothing can be found at once so simple, so reliable, and so 
conclusive. 

Handbook of Christian Evidences. By Alex. Stewart, 
Professor of Theology in the University of Aberdeen. 
i8mo. 25 cents, net. 
We cannot see how more that is useful and instructive could be put to- 
gether in the same space. 



Keys to the Word. Helps to Bible Study. By A. T. Pier- 
son, D.D. i6mo. Cloth. 50 cents, net. 

The Interpreter and His Bible. By A. E. Waffle, M.A. 
i6mo. Cloth. 60 cents. 

Full of suggestive hints and plans for an intelligent study of the Holy 
Scriptures. The various chapters could well be used as a lesbon for normal 
or advanced Sunday classes. 

The Inspired Word. A Series of Papers and Addresses de- 
livered at the Bible-Inspiration Conference, Philadelphia, 
1887. Edited by A. T. Pierson, D.D. i2mo. Cloth. 
$1.00. 

The Wonderful Counselor ; being all the Recorded Sayings of 
the Lord Jesus, chronologically arranged on a plan for easy 
memorizing, in single passages, one for each day in the 
year, with Brief Notes, Connecting Words and Phrases. 
By Rev. Henry B. Mead. With Introduction by Rev. 
Francis E. Clarke. 264 pages. 24mo. Cloth. 50 cents, 
net. 

Jesus the Messiah. Cabinet edition. By Alfred Eders- 
HEiM, M.A., OxON., D.D., Ph.D. An abridged edition of 
** The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah." With Preface 
by Prof. W. Sanday, of Oxford. Small 8vo. Illustrated. 
659 pages. $1.75. 

Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah. The 

Warburton Lectures for 1 880-1 884, with two Appendices 
on the Arrangement, Analysis, and Recent Criticism of the 
Pentateuch. By Alfred Edersheim, M.A., Oxon., D.D., 
Ph.D., author of "The Life and Times of Jesus the Mes- 
siah." Royal 8vo. Cloth. $1.75. 

The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. By Alfred 
Edersheim, M.A., Oxon., D.D., Ph.D. 2 vols Royal 8vo. 
Cloth. $6.00, net. By mail, I6.50. 

The Ages before Moses. A Series of Lectures on the Book 
of Genesis. By J. M. Gibson, D.D. i2mo. Cloth. 
$1.00. 

The Mosaic Era. A Series of Lectures on Exodus, Leviticus, 
Numbers, and Deuteronomy. By J. M. Gibson, D.D., 
author of ** Ages before Moses," etc. i2mo. Cloth. 

$1.00. 



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